


And yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring

by Argyle



Category: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith
Genre: Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Estrangement, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Graphic Descriptions of Medical Experimentation, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Recreational Drug Use, Rescue, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-01-02 03:11:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry had spent two hundred years saving Abe-- even when salvation was the last thing Abe sought from Henry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been entirely too much fun to write. Story diverges from the events of the book directly following Abe's assassination and ignores the last chapter (essentially, Henry turns Abe, but they don't spend the next 150 years together). Also, the only piece of movie canon I've purposely pilfered is that vampires are able to drink alcohol. Cheers!
> 
> \--
> 
> Title from Walt Whitman: http://www.bartleby.com/142/192.html
> 
> WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,  
> And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,  
> I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. 
> 
> O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;  
> Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,  
> And thought of him I love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henry/OMC - chapters 1 and 10 only

_Now_

Many a rewarding night's work began with Henry buying someone a drink. This time, it was in one of the painfully postmodern bars that had lately begun infiltrating the city's financial district: the sort of establishment he should have hated, but didn't. Every gold-gilt surface and glassy angle was backlit in green and magenta, and giant television screens loomed overhead here and there, synchronously broadcasting a music video that was in turn muted by the manic pulse-throb of the sound system. It was hard to find a seat – though these were uncomfortable anyway – and impossible to be heard, but easy enough to order a neat double of twenty-five year old scotch.

And for his new friend, a man of perhaps thirty who'd introduced himself as Peter and was already grinning with the buzz of a few previous drinks, an Old Fashioned. Peter sipped at it happily and allowed Henry to take him by the elbow and navigate a path for them through the crowd. In a more private corner, Henry knew he'd be able to, if not converse, at least _communicate_.

"What do you do?" Peter asked, leaning in. The drink had sweetened the smell of his breath, but to be true, Henry only cared for the richer, deeper perfume of the blood borne on Peter's ever-quickening pulse.

He smiled. It was almost too easy. "Art acquisition, mostly. For dealers, museums-- and my private collection, when I come upon on something I can't part with."

"Such as?"

"Why don't I show you?"

Peter's mouth curved into a wry smile. Then he drained his glass.

But Henry was slower in finishing his whisky. Some enjoyments were too fine to rush. And again, here: as they left the bar Henry might have held Peter's arm with a little more force to lead him down an alley; Henry could have had him right then. Nearly two weeks stood between that moment and his last meal, and the thought alone was enough to drive a spike of hunger through his guts.

_Patience, Sturges._

A short walk brought them to Henry's Aston Martin DB5, the one car he could ever honestly say he loved, and subsequently went to great lengths to maintain. Catching the pleased look on Peter's face as he slipped into the passenger seat, Henry smiled to himself. Yes, he was glad to keep the fellow around a bit longer. He was sure Peter's pleasure would bloom into awe as they accelerated out of town, over the great bridge, and up that wondrous, serpentine coastal highway.

When traffic was light, the Martin's top speed seemed a quaint suggestion, and so the trip home – purported to be a genial seventy-five minutes from city center to front door when he bought the place – could be made in something quite like a flash.

 

In the old days, Henry detested the thought of bringing a victim home with him. To sully one's own bed was vulgar and irresponsible. And yet over time, feeding – let alone taking a life – in public became dangerous. He schooled himself to survive on less blood taken less frequently. Damn him if he didn't crave it as much as he always did, relentlessly, maddeningly, but he was old enough to recognize that the benefits of existence outweighed such grievances.

Henry hardly expected this arrangement to present a positive beyond self-preservation, but there it was: the art of seduction, the infinite finesse of attraction and sex and want became a great pleasure to him. When blood flowed freely, he had simply taken it, gorged himself on the life-force of criminals and widowers and madmen, and ever after was repulsed and acquiescent in equal measure. But now in limitation he fashioned his need into a ritual. Indeed, there were times when he held out for longer than two weeks so that the sensation of being sated in mind and body would seem all the more essential.

It came down to control. Even as they shambled up the pathway and Peter dragged Henry in to steal a kiss and cop a feel, Henry steadied himself, pulled momentarily away, and keyed his passcode into the entry-panel. The lamps were timed, so the foyer and adjoining parlor were already cast in warm, low light. To the far wall, the ocean vista view was obscured by darkness and fog, but one could still dimly make out the crash of waves on the cliff-side far below.

Henry had poured over his home's every detail and extravagance, ensuring his own comfort—and that of his guests.

"Make yourself at ease," he said, taking his jacket off and setting it over the arm of one of the minimalistic side chairs. He made his way over to the liquor shelf.

Peter laughed, a little manically. "Hardly a challenge. This place is incredible, Henry. An ocean view? If someone told me there's still money in art, I wouldn't have believed it until now. Hell, you have me half-wanting to jump ship from my cozy career in pill-pushing. Do you really live here by yourself?"

"Yes," Henry admitted. Then, over his shoulder, "Why don't you have a seat while I fix us drinks." He could hear the soft pat of Peter's footsteps as he crossed the room and settled onto one of the overstuffed sofas. Before Henry could protest, he snatched up the remote, waited for the television to shift out from the wall where moments before it had been discretely hidden behind a carved mahogany panel, and then proceeded to flick through the channels.

Really, had humanity no appreciation for stillness?

At least Peter was striking, tall, long-limbed and sandy-haired, with a narrow nose that accentuated the fullness of his mouth. Henry handed him a whisky and they clinked glasses.

"What shall we drink to?" Henry asked.

Peter smiled. Then he grabbed Henry by his shirtfront and pulled him in for a kiss. If he noticed the chill of Henry's skin, he made no mention of it. For several long moments, they worked at divesting each other of clothes, Henry half-straddling Peter's lap, their mouths never separating for more than the time it took to take juddering, appreciative breaths.

Henry could feel the need rising within him. Before long, his eyes would blacken, pupils blown; his fangs would descend, and he'd bite into Peter's throat with all the restraint yet left to him. He'd drink until he felt Peter's pulse begin to slow and then he would stop; he would stop, seal and heal the wound with a drop of his own vampiric blood, and Peter would wake up on Henry's sofa in the morning with the worst hangover of his life. But alive. Henry'd pour him coffee. Take none himself. Full, content.

And this was all Henry knew. It was all he could fathom, the only thing which remained down to the very bones of him.

Then Peter turned away, his attention abruptly shifting to the television. He was breathing heavily, and he pointed. "You're kidding me! They broke the story early!"

_White hair, liver spots, wrinkles – could the signs of advanced age be a thing of the past? And will there be a day when cancer is history? Coming up next on the news at midnight: area pharmaceutical giant Praxis Industries reports the discovery of the next-gen hemochemical therapy, or what one company representative is calling the Fountain of Youth…_

Henry frowned, looking for the remote control. That damned television had to go, he'd been a fool to have it installed, should never have—

"My god, can you believe it? That's my _baby_. The Fountain." Peter was dazed, laughing a little drunkenly. "I can't believe it."

"What are you talking about?" Henry demanded.

"My project."

"Yes?"

"My team and I… we've been researching the process of aging. Bioelectrical, chemical—mental. And we made a breakthrough. Christ, it's more than that. We may be able to halt the progression of decay within the human body. Reverse it." Peter was speaking quickly, excitedly. He met Henry's eye. Then, perhaps not quite liking what he saw there, he looked back to the screen. "Anyway, it's hard to explain the specifics. Not to mention still patent-pending. You probably aren't—"

"No," Henry cut in, sliding back on the sofa cushion to retake his seat. "Go on."

"Well, you're going to think I'm crazy."

"That's possible, but unlikely."

"You deal with artists. Right." Peter swallowed. "Well— the research. It's all based on a discovery that would've been deemed impossible by just about every reputable scientist in the world a few years ago. The NIH would probably _still_ like to hang me as a charlatan. And if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes… Hell, I do sound crazy.

"Okay. Listen: my team is in possession of blood samples which, when treated with specific enzymes and run through a fortification procedure, can be used in small doses to… Well, to _heal_. Induce complete cellular regeneration. Of rats, chimpanzees. Human tests have been limited so far, but Praxis plans to roll out a full-scale clinical trial by the end of the year. With a little time – and FDA approval, god willing – it'll be the blockbuster drug to end them all."

Henry waited a moment. His hunger was still cacophonous, thrumming through him. But his interest was, as they say, whetted. "Blood samples?"

"Yes." Peter smiled conspiratorially, seeming at once boyish and cruel. "Taken from, get this: what we've come to call our little vampire—or what the paperwork officially denotes as a Class B Abnormal Specimen. It drinks animal blood, it cowers in the presence of UV light, it does stupid pet tricks. A fucking vampire! The feds bagged it somewhere up in Washington State a few years ago. When their project funding was cut, they sent it our way, figuring we could crack it. And we did."

Quickly, very quickly, Henry's patience was waning. The thought that one of his kind was being manipulated in such a fashion was terrible. But that one of his kind had _allowed_ himself to be found out, captured, and held— that was worse.

What sort of demented fool—

What sort of masochistic bastard—

Peter was still talking: "The weird thing? It – the vampire – looks like a certain someone out of my fifth-grade civics book. Oh. You know, it'd be easier to just show you." He reached into his pocket and retrieved his wallet, then held out a slightly wrinkled five-dollar bill. "Spitting image. Bizarre, right? Um. Henry?"

And Henry knew. His vision narrowed with pinhole clarity, his muscles relaxed; the sinking feeling in his stomach, the dread and anger and worry, manifested into a single-syllabled thought. And he knew. _Abe._

It was all Henry could do to keep the splatter of gore to a minimum when he ripped Peter's head off.


	2. Chapter 2

_Then_

In all of Henry's years of existence, he only made one other vampire.

If he was honest with himself then, he would have admitted that the intent to take Abraham Lincoln as his own was always within him. From the first time he saw that sloppy boy getting the stuffing kicked out of him by a rather wicked individual whom Abe'd quickly realized was something _other_ than a human; to their months and years of training, correspondence, and triumph— and the friendship which spanned decades but to Henry seemed to have stemmed from a far deeper fount. Yes, he knew well enough even then that he'd never give Abe up.

He believed in destiny over luck. Surely they were brought together for a reason. And so too did Henry have a purpose in ensuring they remained together…

Namely, affection. Or something rather more than that. Damn him, but whatever power brought Henry's kind into existence, or whoever saw to it that he could be guided by _who_ rather than _what_ he was, had also granted him the unkind ability to explain said feeling, indeed express his hope to give Abe whatever he desired, only to be turned down.

It didn't make Abe any less interesting to Henry. But it did irritate him.

And then he tasted Abe's blood the night they fought, after Willie died. The Union was so close to finding victory, and there was Abe: ready to quit. After all they'd been through! Henry was bowled over, filled to brimming with fury and anguish and need, and he came so very close to simply _taking_ Abe. But hell, he tasted Abe's blood—

Well. That moment, the flash of time in which he lost control and brought Abe to his knees, was enlarged in his mind. The barest recollection of it in the following months drove him to shamed self-pity. Could Abe really have worked with an anatomist's precision to uncover Henry's heart – but unwittingly?

Yes. And even if it was so, Henry couldn't blame Abraham.

He blamed himself.

And providence. Abe was as good as dead when they dragged him from the theatre that night.

Less than a week later, Henry took Abe's body from his coffin. He refilled the ghastly thing with weighted sacks. And he carried him – Abe was as light as a wisp, as light as nothingness – down from the rail car that would have taken him back to Springfield. The train still followed its long trajectory, and millions of witnesses wept at the sight of it, cried out that their President was gone.

They were perfectly right, of course. The President _was_ gone. But Abe, Henry's dearest Abraham, lay stretched out on Henry's bed. For safety's sake, our perhaps only out of paranoia, they were holed up in one of the rooms Henry kept as a safehouse. Even after settling in, Henry was distracted, half-mad with grief.

He was also resolute. He slashed his wrist, pressed it to Abe's mouth, and let the blood run down Abe's throat. When the cut clotted, he cut it again, again; he gave as much as he dared.

And at first nothing happened. Henry paced. He fretted. What if he was wrong – indeed, what if he'd been lied to when he was told that a vampire of some seniority had the power to reanimate a corpse? He'd never _seen_ such a thing. Surely he was a fool to have believed it all these years—

Then Abe coughed, groaned, his whole frame shaking through a mighty tremor, and another. Henry held Abe's shoulders, neatly pinning him to the bed. "Abe, it's all right. You will be all right."

Abe's face contorted into a mask of grief and pain. "No," he hissed. "No—" He met Henry's eye. His look shifted into something darker. More aware. And so very angry.

 

For a couple of days, Abe remained on Henry's bed. He was delirious much of the time, moaning as Henry's vampiric blood worked its way through his system. Abe tried to grab his own head, yank at his hair, so Henry bound his wrists and held him down; it was only then that Henry began to worry that the injury to Abe's brain would be irreparable. And yet he had to hope.

After a while, Abe grew still. Henry didn't dare leave him, but he was weakened, long since having diminished the supply of blood-wine he kept on hand to hold his appetite at bay between meals. He slipped onto the bed beside Abe, one hand set lightly on Abe's chest, and slept.

 

"Henry."

Awareness was slow to return to him. A narrow band of light stretched down to the carpet from a gap in the curtain: midday. Henry's stomach panged with hunger. He felt bleary, displaced.

"Henry." The word came out in a croak. Little more than a rough puff of breath. Then, more clearly: "Henry, what have you done?"

What _had_ he done? The reality of it seemed far removed.

Here was Abe, motionless and cold, but above all _there_ with him.

Henry raised himself up on an elbow and stared at his friend's pale face. Then he reached out to feel the back of Abe's head, finding that the wound was quite healed. "I saved you," he said. "I had to."

 

To say that Abe was _upset_ would be to say the sea had no shortage of wetness. Henry begged him to have patience, to wait until he felt well again before making rash judgments— but of course this depended on Henry getting him fed.

"Please, Abe. Just wait here. I won't be long."

Abe sat on the edge of the bed running his fingers round and round his wrists, rubbing where the rope had held him but no mark remained. He looked up. "You are a fiend, Henry. Why should I believe anything you say? What would make me think you wouldn't leave me locked in this damned room forever—a cruel experiment run afoul?" He'd been on this tangent for an hour or more. Henry had already heard it.

"Everything I have done has been with you in mind."

"Robbing me of peace? Making me into something I've despised since the days of my youth? You mean to tell me you thought this was in my best interest?"

"Yes," Henry said, entreatingly. "And I do promise: I'll return to you."

Twenty minutes later he was downtown, skirting the streets for sign of easy prey. He came upon a couple of stevedores outside a tavern—they were already drunk, belligerent and rowdy. Even some distance away, Henry could make out their conversation.

"…I'm telling you, Al! A gold pocket watch the size of an apple."

"Fine, fine. Go in there and get it. The glum bastard owes us as much."

"And if he's not _agreeable_?"

"Stick 'im with this." The man called Al handed over a small but perilously sharp dagger. "Just be quick about it…"

When the one retreated back inside, Henry grabbed Al by the collar, covered his mouth to stifle his cries, and took him. The taste of his blood was revelatory. Heady and rich. But Henry did his best not to get caught up in the sensation of his stilling heartbeat. He snapped the fellow's neck before all the blood was yet out of him, pulled the body into the narrow side-alley, and waited.

After another five minutes, he was half-dragging, half-carrying the other man towards the curb, having batted him on the temple to knock him out. There was no sign of the pocket watch, but yes, there was the bloody dagger. Henry tossed it away. Then he hailed a hansom, nodding up at the driver. "My friend is shipping out tomorrow—there's nothing like a proper sendoff, eh?"

"Right," the driver said tiredly. He'd no doubt already spent half his night hauling drunks to and fro. "Where will it be, then?"

Henry ordered them to a spot a block down and two streets away from the correct address, and by the time he was lifting the stevedore up the staircase to his room, the poor sod had begun to stir.

"Be quiet," Henry commanded. Then he opened the door, preemptively dreading the sight: what if Abe had gone? Fled? Then again, there was Abe, planted firmly on the bed, just where Henry'd left him. Only now he sat slouched over with his head in his hands, his long, shivering frame folded in on itself.

"Why, Henry?" he whispered. When he looked up, his eyes were as black as night and quite as deep, and his new fangs gleamed in the lamplight. The sight was enough to send a chill down Henry's spine—had he truly condemned his dear friend to such a fate?

But no, it was worth it. Certainly it was, even as Henry shut the door and eased his captive to the floor, Abe staring him down all the while. Then Abe's attention shifted. The man had a gash on his head, blood flowing from the spot where Henry'd struck him. Henry took Abe by the hand, guided him over to the man's prostrate body, and pulled the collar back to reveal the tender bend where throat met shoulder.

"I heard you," said Abe, "when you were a block away. I smelled him."

"Abe, there isn't—"

"You have wrought a monster. I don't know my own mind. I don't… There's nothing but the _reek_ of him. Dare I ask if he's deserving of our attention?" Abe nearly growled, the sound breaking free from his clenched jaw. "No, Henry. You always penned the list of those who would die. Should I still follow your bidding without question?"

With that, Abe fell on the man, gnashed at his throat so the blood spouted out of him. It coated Abe's face, and his hands where he gripped at torn clothing— and torn flesh.

He drank until the freely-flowing blood ran dry and the man was quite dead, and then he began to lick at the wound. Purposeful, inquisitive. Hungry. Henry made no move to interfere. In another minute, there was nothing left but husk and gore.

Pulling back, Abe groaned, long and remorseful. And also with utmost pleasure.

Then he looked down at himself. His clothes – the shirt and trousers he'd been buried in: why in hell's name had Henry not secured others? – were as soiled as the floor about them. He tried to clean his hands, rubbing his palms on his thighs. But it was of no use. There was shame in his eyes even as his body shook, breath heaving in and out of him, every fibre ecstatic with the heat of his meal. 

"It won't always be like this," said Henry. He stroked Abe's arm. Pulled him into an embrace and held him tightly. "It will get better."

Abe, for his part, only laughed.


	3. Chapter 3

_Now_

As follows, the contents of Abraham Lincoln's pockets the night he was shot: a silver pocket watch and fob; a monogrammed handkerchief; eyeglasses with case and cleaning swab; a bone-handled knife; his wallet which held several bank notes; and a button.

This Henry knew was from Abe's left jacket cuff, accidentally tugged free by Abe's own hand earlier that day. He'd in fact been worrying at it for weeks, and then finally the thread could take no more… Or so Henry noted. Just because Abe had refused to see Henry didn't mean Henry wished to stop seeing Abe. Over the years, he'd grown so used to observing Abe from a careful distance, studying his activities and expressions, listening in to his highs and lows, that to stop doing so at Abe's overwrought insistence seemed folly. In those late hours of war, Abe'd demanded Henry's attention more than ever—

Yes, and perhaps even then Henry wasn't as good as he thought he was at seeing the forest for the trees.

As for the rest of it: Henry knew what was in Abe's pockets because he'd bought the lot at auction for fifteen thousand dollars in 1909.

It was no small sum of money, even for him, but when he inspected the pieces, recognizing at once that they were the real thing, he knew he had to have them.

In the following decades, Henry went on to amass what was undoubtedly the largest private collection of Lincolniana in the world. He housed it in his study. To the things he already had, campaign flyers and pins and placards, he began by adding items from Lincoln's own day, logoed cigar boxes, biscuit tins, and even several trade cards. He found – for no, he never really sought these things out, or only did so when something of particular interest or scarcity came to light – and purchased commemorative plates, flags, banners, dolls and figurines of varying likeness and accuracy. There was even a statuette which, when one screwed off the head, was revealed to hold half a liter of cheap Kentucky bourbon.

Some items bordered on morbidity. Black armbands, memorial rosettes, and newspaper clippings detailing the funeral train's procession, north and then west. Sketches of saddened citizens, and a rare daguerreotype of Mary in mourning.

Henry disliked the surreal, ironic icons of recent years, plastic action figures and bobble-headed toys – but they were no more inaccurate than anything else, no less glad, and so he placed them on the shelves in ever greater ranks until he possessed a small army of stoic, long-faced, sharp-eyed, and above all _displaced_ Lincolns.

Beyond that, Henry owned books on his friend which filled a wall, numbering in the hundreds. Many were biographies, every one grasping to capture the very same tale, the exact stretch of fifty-six years that constituted one man's life and should have been so easy to explain, but wasn't.

There were books on Abe's personal habits. His love life and marriage. Fatherhood. Philosophy. His pursuits and politics. Staid depictions gave way to more curious analyses by modern historians: examinations of Abe's sexuality, his melancholy. There were fictions passed off as truth, and pure fantasies which unknowingly hinted at fact.

And in a locked, airtight case there were Abe's own papers. His personal correspondences; all the letters he'd written to Henry during his mortal life; and his journals. Henry rarely opened the case, fearing damage through handling. But today he needed to see. Not _remember_ , per se, for he already knew each word by heart, but to set his eyes on that familiar, deliberate penmanship and once more glean the truth of it all: Abe had spent his life hunting vampires. The determination to bestow freedom had prescribed the course of his years, and in turn, Henry's as well.

Henry picked up a journal and opened to a page at random.

_17 Jul., 1825_

_It is settled. Though I know not whether the man himself should be trusted, I will endeavor to trust in his leadership. There is no other way to remove the scourge of Vampires from this Earth._

_He has lately taken to reading Homer's_ Odyssey _in the evenings after our work is done. I know, for I have looked to confirm it, he does so directly from the Greek. That he should be possessed of sufficient knowledge to so seamlessly translate and speak is a marvel._

_He enunciates clearly, and with great emotion._

_I know he is a sorrowful creature. But he looks at me, and I see his eyes are filled with a kind of keen interest that I scarcely wish to define. Some part of me is loath to disappoint him._

_Later—  
Again, I heard him pacing. His steps were light but still caused the floorboards to creak here and there. When they ceased I thought him settled to bed, but then he climbed the stairs and the front door opened and closed. There came the sound of a latch striking home—from, I thought, the outside._

_I do not hope to know the nature of his errand. But I grow uneasy in his absence._

Nearly two hundred years after those thoughts were put to paper, Henry was holed up in his study, tucked into his very favorite wingchair – a hulking leather thing, careworn and faded, with claw feet grown wobbly after three centuries' worth of use – and nibbling his thumbnail down to the quick. The swollen skin round the cuticle had been bleeding for several minutes, and it stung as he teased at it with his tongue.

Like a bolt, Abe's words had taken him back. He could recall with precision the weight of that particular edition of Homer's epic in his hands, each page smooth against his fingers, the ink going sepia with age. He'd had it a while. A true while. And if he tried, even then he could recite the passages without taking much care to consult the text.

The house still smelled of the rabbit stew he'd concocted for Abe's supper, greasy and rich, and with either the fullness of the meal or the rigors of the day, Abe had begun to nod off right when Odysseus was being tied to the mast so that he might better fathom the temptations of the sirens. It was, as they say, peculiar timing.

Henry had stopped reading, setting the book to his knee, a finger pressed within to hold the place. The room was dim, really only lit by a few candles—but then, it needn't be otherwise, for Henry's eyesight was exceptional. He could make out every stitch on Abe's worn cotton shirt; all the seams and crooks of fabric. The scuffs and bruises which formed after Henry'd tackled him to the forest floor. Each hair on his head, and the yet-fine whiskers that were stubbornly trying to usurp the plane of his jaw. All the length and breadth of him.

Abe's chest moved with slow, steady breath, the air taken through his mouth in great lungfuls. He was not a conventionally beautiful boy. The trials of his young life had already marked him in irreparable ways. But Henry was quite taken—yes, completely contented by the strength of his spirit.

There was a purpose to Abe. Henry saw it in the same way he might extract the features of a field lit by full, blue moonlight. And it terrified Henry just as it excited him to think _he_ might be the one to summon that purpose to being.

When Abe began to stir, Henry dropped his gaze, resumed his oration as if he'd never stopped. Abe blinked at him blearily and did his best to pick up the narrative. Henry smiled. "That's, I think," he said, "enough for tonight. To bed with us both. We've work to resume come morning."

Abe nodded. "Thank you, Henry. Sleep well."

Henry watched him retreat to his room. But before he closed the door behind him, he again caught Henry's eye. "Good night, Henry."

If Henry's breath had been capable of hitching in his chest, surely it would have. But instead there was only sadness and yearning—and hunger.

From the very start of things, Henry'd wanted Abe.

He'd wanted so much for him.

And he'd botched things. Once, twice, beyond reckoning: he'd let Abe down.

Then, suddenly returning to himself, to the present, he shuddered. Damn it all, but fidgeting, wrestling with his worry and grief and rage, would do no good. He pulled his hand away from his mouth and watched with some distaste as the little wound healed itself.

Knowing that Abe was being held captive, he also knew Abe must be saved.

And soon. Peter's disappearance would be noted before long. Without a doubt he'd been seen leaving the bar with Henry, so even a casual inquiry would lead to Henry's front door, never mind the fact that Peter's fingerprints were all over Henry's car. Or that his DNA was strewn up Henry's wall.

To think he'd spent so much time being careful—

Indeed, Henry hadn't killed one of his victims in over seven years. And it had been far longer than that since he'd done so in his own living room. Still, tender precaution had led him to equip his doors with reinforced steel plating, and his locks with twelve-digit access codes. He pulled his car into the garage, covered it with canvas, and armed the security perimeter.

The evidence of Peter's body was more problematic. By Henry's own admittance, he'd been a fool, so unacceptably blinded by anger that he lashed out against Peter's petulance and self-satisfaction… But not only that. Henry killed Peter – glutted himself to brimming on Peter's blood – out of humiliation. He'd failed to protect his progeny. He'd broken the only promise he'd made to Abe that was worth its salt. And hell, but Henry could have convinced Peter to tell him everything. With Peter alive he might have had more to work with than a name.

And yet: providence. Without Peter, Henry wouldn't even have had that.

Still cursing himself, he wrapped Peter's body in plastic and did his best to wipe the more obvious bloodstains from the floor.

Then he powered up his notebook to find out anything he could about Praxis Industries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lincoln's pocket contents courtesy of the [Library of Congress](http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/stern-lincoln/objects.html).


	4. Chapter 4

_Then_

In the summer of 1846, Henry procured an isolated plot of land at the foot of Mount Marcy in New York's Adirondack Mountains. He cleared the flattest area of trees, and after several weeks' worth of heavy labor had built a cabin: larger than those he'd constructed before by a considerable margin, with a handsome fieldstone chimney spanning a quarter of the rear wall that would heat the main structure of the house as well the hidden rooms he dug out below.

At the time, building it served as a pleasant distraction. He spilled enough proverbial sweat on it that he was almost able to ignore the looming threat of war and forget his and Abe's near-constant— Well. He would have liked to explain it away as miscommunication. Nothing permanent. Besides which, working with his hands always left him with a sense of accomplishment. He didn't know when he would need the place. Only that he would.

And now, nearly two decades later, he knew that this was where he would take Abe.

 

When Henry was made a vampire, he received little direction. Surely as Thomas Crowley had already murdered him – indeed taken the lives of everyone Henry loved – there was little worse he could do. But Crowley bullied Henry, mocked his hesitation at indiscriminately drinking human blood, and soon cast off his young progeny. Everything Henry did thereafter was unsure and unrefined, and so in his fumbled attempts at feeding, acclimating himself to the nighttime – going about with his _life_ in the only ways he knew how – he ran the constant risk of being found out.

For months and years, Henry was terrified of his own nature.

He wanted Abe to suffer through none of that. By being the best mentor to his old friend that he could, he would impart the benefits of their condition. Longevity, speed, strength, foresight, and so much more were there for Abe's taking. And in Abe's reeducation, so too would Henry's decision to steal Abe from his grave be all the more justified. Perhaps then Abe would even wish to continue their work—

Hell, that was probably the last thing Henry should have been thinking about. In the short time since he awoke, Abe had fed twice, so Henry _knew_ that he must have been bristling with energies undreamt of in his mortal life. Or at least Henry knew how such quantities of blood would have deliriously affected his own temperament. But Abe spent much of his time in bed, alternately somber and peevish, his eyes shielded by the crook of his elbow night and day, even when Henry drew the curtains so fastidiously that no glimmer of light permeated the thick weave. He'd even given Abe a handsome pair dark glasses, and would have proffered all the others in his considerable collection— if only Abe showed the slightest bit of interest in surveying the world by dawn or dusk.

When he wasn't in bed he sat with a book open in his hands and stared blankly at a single page for many minutes, sometimes hours at a time.

And he paced, rallying against Henry with slow, gravelly accusations. He held his head in his hands, pressed his palms over his ears, and his body shook as he sobbed but could not shed tears.

It pained Henry to see Abe in such a state. By rights, he should have also given Abe space, granted him sufficient time to acclimate. But what if Abe was seen, or worse, he did something rash and compromised them both? It was time they left Washington behind.

"I know you feel unwell. Abraham, believe me: being here doesn't help," he explained gently. "Remaining in the city with all the memories of your life so close at hand will only bring you pain."

"Your words betray you. You would have me believe I ought to _forget_. But I've no wish to. Mary—My boys. I cannot—"

"Would you have them know the truth? Surely Mary's been through enough already."

Abe glared at him. Then he crossed the room in two long strides and raised a white-knuckled fist. " _You_ ," he hissed, his teeth clenched in fury, "are a bastard, Henry. If only I'd realized…"

"Yes? What if things had gone differently on the riverbank that night, all those years ago? Would you have been content to die, unsung, on the eve of war?" Henry was trying very hard to keep his emotions in check. For Abe to so flagrantly admonish him, to not express even a scrap of gratitude... It made him ache. He longed to take Abe in his arms and shake him, embrace him, _reach_ him— But no. Henry steeled himself. From the moment he turned Abe without his consent he knew he would have to regain Abe's trust.

Henry reached out and stroked Abe's forearm, bidding him to lower his hand. "If there is to be any peace for either of us in the days to come, we must first reconcile the past. Let me show you, Abe. Let me teach you."

A change came over Abe's face. The anger in his expression folded away and he let his fist fall to his side. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

 

Substantial sums of cash always had a way of prompting urgency within the merchant sphere. In less than a fortnight, Henry secured all the goods and materials he'd need to ensure their comfort as they traveled to New York – and if there were things he forgot, cash would again do well to procure things on the road.

Henry met with a tailor, handing over Abe's measurements.

"I take it these aren't for you," the little man commented, jotting notes on a sheet of loose-leaf.

"Your observational skills," said Henry, shifting his balance from one foot to another, "are excellent. Unfortunately I'm only paying you for your skill with needle and thread. Two coats, three pairs of trousers, three shirts. Can you have them to me by Thursday?"

The tailor grunted an affirmative. Only begrudgingly, but Henry believed him.

Likewise, he had confidence in the cobbler, the armorer, and the coachmaker—this one in particular had gone to great lengths to appease Henry's anxiety, not to mention earn Henry's coin. A made-to-order carriage was never a small request, and Henry's insistence that it be large enough to house a chaise and chair in lieu of the traditional benches, and outfitted with lightproof shutters over the windowpanes – his wife, he explained, was suffering from consumption and found sunlight intolerable – would be enough to vex even a seasoned craftsman. But this fellow shrugged it off, assuring delivery.

The question wasn't one of time, but of aesthetics: should the interior paneling be made of cherry, black walnut, or oak?

Abe, for his part, declined to offer input on the matter. Even so, since they'd left the safehouse flat and reestablished themselves at Henry's townhouse he'd at least given up spending all his time holed up in his room.

But it was with more annoyance than interest that he packed a trunk for himself: pens and ink, a blank diary, and a stack of books taken from Henry's collection. Henry was admittedly pleased to see that the old Shakespeare volume was among them, and he made no mention of the things Abe ignored, a pair of leather gloves, a pipe, an ivory penknife, monogrammed handkerchiefs, and all the assorted objects Abe had absentmindedly left behind at Henry's home over the years. The things which Henry kept at hand, but – absentmindedly – failed to return.

 

"Traveling day and night… Of course we'll need to rest the horses, but by my reckoning we'll arrive before the fifteenth of June…" Henry trailed off, glancing back down to consult his map. It was attractive thing, hand-drafted in ink and watercolor—and purportedly the most accurate record of regional roads and topography available. He'd sketched out the route they'd take from Washington to the cabin, and while it perhaps wasn't the most direct, it would present little resistance. "We should plan to leave in two days. Well?"

Abe didn't turn away from the window. "It matters little to me," he murmured, staring down at the lamp lit street. "The whole thing is absurd— then, I've come to expect little else from you."

"I know the accommodations aren't great, but if we went by horse alone we'd be forced to find lodgings every time the sun rises. We cannot risk discovery. And you aren't yet strong enough to stay out in the light—"

"That's hardly my fault."

"No," Henry agreed. "But it's better than the alternative."

"Is it?" Abe finally met Henry's eye. There was doubt there, yes, but there was also disappointment.

Henry went to him, placed a hand on his shoulder and said, "Abe, tell me. What do you see when you look out into the world?"

"Horror," Abe snapped. "This thing inside me watches every passing human, listens to their beating hearts and _craves_. It would like nothing more than to glut itself again and again."

"You're right. It is a fell thing— And it's a part of you. But it needn't make up the whole."

Abe appeared to consider this. And then: "I struggle."

"Only because you are new."

"How can you know that, Henry? You, who for decades sent me the names of those lacking even a scrap of humanity. _They_ allowed it to consume them."

"There are wicked men who only become more so when they're made into vampires. You, Abe, are something quite different."

"I wish I could believe that. Tell me: after three hundred years, has it become easy for you? Or was it simply so when you began?"

In truth, it was never easy for Henry. He was a creature of hunger and lust and violence. But he also had a strong will, and so was a _man_ of compassion and intelligence—and hope.

No, the failings of their condition mustn't utterly condemn them. Henry needed Abe to realize this—as much as he'd ever needed anything in his long life. As much as he needed Abe himself. He said, "Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. You of all people should understand that. Abe, look out the window and tell me what _you_ see. Surely it's not only darkness."

Abe looked. "Not darkness—no. Each shadow has its own hue, silver, charcoal, brown. They shift and tremble. Dance as the as the lamps flicker." He sighed. "I see sidewalk stones worn down a little with every passing step. Window boxes stuffed with flower bulbs. Beneath the soil, they're moving. Growing.

"And I see people. I can sometimes make out what they say. Men and women going about their business. When you examine it, Henry—when you take the time to notice, you'll find that no life is ordinary."

It was a start.

Henry said, "Knowing that, my friend, is why you will never deserve it sooner."

 

They prepared to depart shortly after sundown. Henry packed the coach and readied the horses, keeping himself busy, hurrying up and down the staircase and taking last steps to close up the townhouse – for who knew how long it would be before he returned – until finally he could do no more. "It's time we left," he piped through Abe's door.

There was a rustling sound, the shuffling of paper, the click of Abe's boots on the wood floor, and then Abe himself. He was wearing the sunglasses Henry had given him, the trousers and shirt Henry'd ordered. His jaw was shaved smooth – and the scar his beard had hidden for the last years of his life was gone.

Before Henry could comment, he said, "A hunch. When I saw that some of the others weren't there anymore—" he pulled at his sleeve to reveal his inner forearm, and stroked the spot where Henry knew Abe had once been badly gouged "—I wondered. Even the oldest have faded. What do you make of that, Henry? Perhaps I'll soon be sixteen again."

It was a small joke, innocuous and offhanded, but it was the first time had Abe shown any sort of cheer since he awoke to his new life. Something stirred in Henry. Anticipation, and deeper, a gladness he couldn't disguise. Changed as things were between them, this man was still Henry's own Abraham. "You needn't worry about that," he said, then paused, seeing Abe's mouth stretch into a soft smile. He returned it. "But if you'd like, you could wear your hair longer, as you did in those days. It will grow out. Slowly."

"So I suppose you were holding out on me? What else did you fail to mention when you long ago explained the nature of vampires?"

"Only things that bore no weight in your mission to vanquish them from this world."

Abe stared over the rims of his glasses. His eyes were narrowed— but he was still smiling. "And now that I am one?"

If Henry had kept things from Abe in the past – and yes, certainly he had – he would make up for it now, and more. Even as they sat together on the driver's bench of their coach, Henry working the reigns as Abe quietly observed the darkening city, Henry assured him, "I'll tell you everything I know."

 

"Henry! You're joking!" Abe guffawed, his voice carrying out from the closed cab. They'd been on the road for half a week, and with the lengthening of the daylight it would still be another hour before Henry would ask Abe to join him in the open air. Still, absurd as it was, Henry'd grown used to the arrangement. It had been years since he and Abe had spent so much time in such close proximity, and he'd admit readily enough that the company was more than welcome—thrilling, even. With every hitch of Abe's breath, Henry felt a pinch of pleasure.

And so he did everything in his power to make Abe laugh. "Joking? Not at all," he said. "But I was young then."

"How young?"

"Scarcely one hundred and twenty."

Abe laughed again, heartily and long. "But _peacocks_? You can't mean to tell me they wouldn't have been missed."

"Well. I didn't consider it at the time—"

Then there was a boom-crack, the unmistakable sound of a pistol being fired, and Henry's body snapped backwards against the coach. He felt a wetness bloom out from his shoulder: blood painfully flowing out of him. "What in hell's name—"

"Pull to a stop or you're dead!" a voice filtered out from the woodland that lined the road.

Henry looked around, scanning his surroundings. The sun had nearly set and the sky had begun to take on an orange-pink glow. After a moment he spotted a single figure hunched between a couple of wide brambles. Henry didn't want a scene, not here, not with Abe still so vulnerable, so he called out, "You're making a mistake, my friend. Be on your way and I'll pretend it never happened."

"Henry? What's going on?" Abe asked anxiously. Henry could hear him stirring; there wasn't nearly enough room for him to stand inside the coach, but he'd pushed his chair back swiftly enough that the wooden feet scraped against the floor.

"It's all right, Abe," Henry said, and then another shot rang out, the bullet this time hitting the dirt by the horses' hooves. They bucked and whinnied, spooked. It was all Henry could do to keep them from bolting.

The attacker bellowed, "If you don't listen to me, the next'll take your life. Step down!"

"I'm unarmed," Henry said, but he was already tying the reins back and making his way to the ground. He patted the horses to calm them, and checked his shoulder – it still throbbed, undoubtedly closing already, but he was glad to find that the bullet had gone clean through him; he never relished having to reopen a wound later to remove those little slugs of lead. Then in a hurried whisper, he told Abe, "He's alone. If there were others, I would know."

And likewise he'd come across enough highwaymen in his life to see that this fellow wasn't one at all. His heart was beating furiously in his chest, fueled by fright more than excitement; his thoughts were disjointed, unhappy; and he was sweating even though the dusk was turning cool. No, he was likely just desperate – returned home from the war, if his tattered blue jacket was any indication – and armed to the teeth. He kept his gun pointed at Henry as he made his way down to the road.

Henry almost felt sorry for him. On another day, the man might've made off with horses and valuables to pawn. On another day, his victims wouldn't have been a couple of vampires.

But Henry didn't take kindly to threats. He pocketed his glasses and kept his gaze down as the man approached, and letting his senses expand, he took in the crunch of twigs beneath the man's feet; the way his breath hitched in and out of his chest; the scents that clung to him, whiskey and tobacco and dust. And most of all, Henry took in the heady thump of blood through him.

In an instant, Henry was upon him. He rapped the man's hand against the ground and sent the gun flying into the ditch, and then pinned his wrists beneath a steely grip. The man screamed, but then who could blame him? Henry knew what it meant to come face to face with a vampire. By now his fangs were fully extended, gleaming and sharp; and his pupils were blown. Frightful? Yes, he was that. And he was suddenly so _hungry_. "I did warn you," he growled, "that you were making a mistake."

"No! No, you can't!"

"Henry…" There was a hand on Henry's shoulder, and Henry glanced round to see that Abe had stepped out of the coach. For one panicked moment, Henry thought that the sun had already begun to eat away at Abe's skin—but then again, no: it was only a reflection of the sky pinkening to dusk. He looked perfectly well. He was even wearing his glasses.

But behind them, his eyes glinted like black mirrors.

"Henry, he isn't—"

"He would have killed us."

Abe shook his head warily. "You know he couldn't have."

"It was in him to do so," Henry said. "Can you not hear it?" Here the man began to squirm, his groans muffled by Henry's palm. With his other hand, Henry pulled the man's collar back and used a fingernail to nick the vein. As ever, the scent of blood was intoxicating.

Abe hesitated for another moment. Then he dropped to his knees, closing in on the man's throat. Henry moved away to take a wrist, bit down hard, and let the blood fill his mouth. For several minutes, they remained like that, drinking their fill as their prey's pulse grew weak. It had been many long years since Henry had last shared a meal, but here as before he imagined that he could feel the other vampire's presence, sense him through a conduit of artery and sinew like sparks skipping between a pair of fine wires.

Henry imagined Abe's thoughts: desolation and wonderment and want.

And when their prey was quite dead they sat on the road together, breathing heavily and waiting for the rush to fade. Henry watched as Abe's cheeks took on a heated flush. He clasped his hands together to stop them from shaking, and he looked at Henry.

Henry read Abe's expression, recognized desolation and wonderment; and in Abe's eyes, yes, there was want. He felt a stirring in the pit of his stomach. He would have liked nothing better than to lick the blood from the corners of Abe's mouth—or what little of it there was, for Abe had already picked up on how to feed carefully.

Then Abe's gaze dropped. "Henry, your shoulder! Are you—"

Henry shivered, rousing himself. It was true that his shirt and waistcoat were soaked though with blood, but he could feel that the wound had healed. "I'm fine," he said, rising to his feet. He offered Abe his hand. "But we should, I think, be back on our way."

 

After that, their trip was made in relative peace. Henry would drive all morning and then sit with Abe in the cab for a while to avoid the midday sun and rest the horses. The cab held them both comfortably. It was cool and dim—indeed, only lit by the small lamp Abe kept on hand so Henry could better pour them each a glass of the blood-wine he'd brought along. Another few hours' worth of driving made up the afternoon, and perhaps two more in the evening when Abe joined Henry on the driver's bench, before they once more made camp.

The only delay was brought on by a prodigious rain storm, with several inches falling over the span of a few hours and rendering the road impassable. Though they were less than twenty miles from the cabin, they were forced to stop in the nearest village, where Henry made arrangements to board the horses and paid for accommodations above the tavern.

From what he could tell, they were the only lodgers – the barman beamed as he told Henry that the so-called master suite was available, but the amenities left much to be desired. A chair, a small writing desk, a wash basin, and one narrow bed. The latter was unsurprising, but Henry demurred, "You take it, Abe. I've managed to doze in far worse than an armchair before."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Abe. He'd pulled off his boots and was sitting on the foot of the bed. "A few hours ago you were downright gleeful that we were through spending our nights on the ground."

Henry huffed out a laugh and began to unbutton his waistcoat. When he was down to his drawers he joined Abe on the bed, sliding in to the side nearer to the wall. He was acutely aware of Abe's closeness; there was space between them—but not much.

Abe meanwhile sat against the headboard and read by the light of a single candle. Henry closed his eyes and listened to the crisp, regular sound of Abe turning the pages, until that too gave way to silence.

And then: "I wrote to Mary."

With a start, Henry raised himself on his elbows and searched Abe's face. "What?"

"A few weeks ago. I wrote to Mary, and I— I meant to tell her everything." Panic was rising swiftly in Henry's chest, rocking him, but before he could argue Abe sighed, "You were gone on one of your errands. It wasn't yet dusk, but I was careful about covering up. I sealed the envelope and walked outside with it tucked in my coat, and I made it all the way to the post office. I stood in front of the clerk with every intention of sending it… 

"I didn't. In the end, I found I couldn't."

Henry nodded slowly. It was the best choice—of course it was. He knew for the sake of them both that Mary could never know what had become of her husband. If ever Henry had felt jealous of her, of Abe's commitment to her, he'd long since overcome it. But he didn't lack pity. Nor remorse. If he'd recognized Abe's intentions, would he even have intervened? Hell, but he never meant to deny Abe anything.

After a long moment, he ventured, "What had changed?"

Abe looked Henry in the eye, his gaze calm and intelligent. "Do you really need to ask?"

Henry waited.

Then Abe said, "I'm ready."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Section to be continued in chapter 5!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: mild gore.

_Then_

They'd been sparring for hours, running freely though the dense woods that surrounded the cabin. Abe was naked to the waist, barefoot. Bleeding here and there where Henry had clawed him, but even the deeper wounds weren't more than a passing discomfort to him. He'd long since familiarized himself with the terrain, and was indeed close to mastering it as he dodged between trees and up and down the creek's narrow embankment to gain ground and catch Henry off guard.

Henry swung about and managed to get an arm round Abe's throat, but then Abe pivoted and landed his elbow in Henry's gut.

If Henry had any wind in him, the blow might've knocked it out.

As it was, the weight of it caused him to lose his footing. He landed, sprawled on his back, and Abe came down hard on his middle, a knee planted to each side as his quick hands moved up to pin Henry's wrists.

Abe grinned wildly, invigorated. "Do you yield?"

The waxing moon streaked the night with blue light, bright enough to halo Abe's well-mussed hair and cast his skin in silver. But then, there was gash on his cheek, the flesh about his right eye was scuffed, and a swath of mud was caked to one ear, all the result of a particularly brutal tangle in the brush—and his smile was cunning… Sharp. A relic of the frescos, some avenging angel, he was not. 

And yet— And yet here was Henry's old friend, the man he'd trained to slay the wicked, and who took his seat in the highest office in the land to better do so. Abe's eyes were full of humor. He let his grip slide and his expression softened. "Henry?"

Henry's whole heart went out to him, again, once more. 

"Yes." What else could be said? Of course he yielded. Hell, but it would've been quite agreeable to Henry to simply remain right there for a good long while.

But Abe shifted back and rose to his feet, and then offered a hand to Henry. Henry took it, returning Abe's smile. "Best of three?"

 

Two months had passed since they arrived in New York. That first night, Henry was relieved to find the cabin just as he'd left it – it had been, after all, a couple of decades since he'd last seen the place, and so even as he first began to plan their trip he dreaded to think of what they'd discover when they got there. Of course _that_ wasn't something he mentioned to Abe.

But the storm shutters were all intact and the interior was blessedly free of mold. The only obvious sign that time had passed was the fine layer of dust which coated the scant furniture Henry had placed in the upper room, and thankfully the hidden lower rooms, still largely unfinished, had suffered no structural failings in the intervening years.

Abe came down from the driver's bench and looked about, eventually commenting, "When did you have time to build this?"

"Time?" Henry laughed. "You'll find that time matters little to our sort."

He hadn't meant anything by it. After all, the moment should have been a glad one for them both – his glibness was only the result of being road weary – but Abe frowned and walked away, mumbling about wanting to learn a little about the surroundings.

Henry meanwhile took advantage of the early evening breeze and pulled open the shutters to begin airing out the cabin. Then he unhitched the horses, removing their bridles and guiding them to the paddock, and began unloading his and Abe's belongings from the coach. When all the trunks and bags were piled in the center of the main room, the whole of them didn't look like much. Hardly enough to maintain a life. Even Abe's expression, when he finally joined Henry inside, seemed to echo this sentiment.

"We can send for anything you need," Henry assured him.

"I've always been one to travel light." Abe shrugged. He was looking wan; he'd need to feed again soon. For a moment, he appeared to be lost in thought. And then: "I collected some kindling. Logs. They're unseasoned, but I could try if you'd like…"

"Yes," Henry agreed, automatically but in earnest. "Nothing makes a place feel more like a home than a roaring fire."

A little while later, as Henry was pouring whisky into two newly-unpacked crystal tumblers, Abe looked up from the fireplace and smiled. "Henry, I think you missed your calling as a stonemason. The workmanship on this chimney's very fine."

Henry stopped himself before retorting that Abe should've seen his first attempt at fashioning such a thing, instead leaving it at, "Thank you." He sipped his drink and watched Abe over the rim of his glass. For his part, Abe was an expert with a tinderbox and the fire had by now begun to smolder, the flames licking at the tender twigs that were wedged beneath the logs.

Behind all that was Henry's hearthstone. It was chipped on one corner, and having taken the brunt of so many fires it was hard to make out the carved markings which dotted the surface. But then again, he'd installed the piece in every cabin he'd ever inhabited. He wondered, idly, if Abe recognized it from those months he'd spent with Henry in the summer of 1825.

By God's hooks, Henry thought suddenly; that was forty years ago.

Softly, Abe broke in, "I always wondered what it said."

Henry looked at him – oh, but Abe did have an uncanny knack for guessing Henry's thoughts. Then he cleared his throat. "Sturges. Henry and Edeva. 8 June 1586."

"The date you were married," said Abe.

"Yes," Henry agreed. "It was a gift from Edeva's father. Can you imagine? There were so many things we _should_ have brought with us, but instead we dragged a bloody _hearthstone_ across the Atlantic Ocean..." he trailed off. They hadn't even had a chance to mortar it into place before things went to hell. But after his maker cast him off he went back to Roanoke; he searched the remnants of their old home and lo, that onerous thing was what he found.

After a moment he realized he was holding his glass so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. He also noted that said glass was empty – so he refilled it and then raised it in a toast. "To days yet to come."

 

Abe had always been quick on his feet with wits to match, even when the miseries of war hounded him to the end of his mortal years; but Henry'd witnessed Abe's prowess, and moreover recognized his _potential_ , the night they first met. Hell, he'd be lying if he didn't admit that his excitement to tap such raw skill helped push him over the edge when he first agreed to take Abe on as a pupil.

Now Henry's vampiric blood had amplified Abe's abilities tenfold. The changes to his body, his newfound strength and awareness, spurred his enthusiasm to train. He ran and dodged and challenged Henry whenever they sparred, which by Abe's insistence was often. He observed the nighttime world with keen interest. And he hunted with speed and accuracy and terrifying grace.

In short, unwelcome as his new powers might've been at the outset, he had it in his mind to master them.

He was also determined to understand their limitations.

It would be a century before he could withstand anything but the slightest sliver of daylight. As old and undiluted as Henry's blood was, it was the same for all vampires. Indeed, if the devil Crowley was to be believed, he was over four hundred when he sired Henry, and Henry had suffered mightily whenever he was forced into the sun during those first hundred years. Even recent advancements in protective balms were of little help. To a new vampire, the sun was something to be avoided at all costs.

And yet Abe told Henry, quite reasonably, that he had to _know_.

"But I can tell you!" Henry cried. They'd been over it already. Henry respected Abe's purpose but was unwilling to let him hurt himself. After a moment, with greater calm: "Abe, please. There are simply some things which you must take at my word. If you go out in the day, do you know what will happen?"

Abe folded his arms over his chest but didn't reply.

Henry continued, "You will burn. Your flesh will begin to blister almost immediately, and you'll be overcome with sickness. It may take days – _weeks_ for you to recover. And in that time every part of you will ache. That is, if you're able to drag your agonized body to safety."

"Isn't that what _you're_ here for, Henry?" It was said with a smile, but Henry shook his head, unmoved.

"I won't be party to such a reckless—experiment."

"Then at least tell me you'll watch."

Henry's mouth had gone dry. "Abe, please."

Now Abe crossed the room, setting a hand on Henry's arm. He looked at him beseechingly. "Henry, you have to understand. I didn't ask for this, but you can be damned sure I'm going to figure it out."

Which was why Henry now stood by Abe's side in a nearby field. He'd brought along a couple of heavy wool blankets, but beyond that – and the certain insistence that Abe wear his glasses – there was little he could do to prepare.

The predawn light cast everything in violet. Throughout the field, resident insects and animals were beginning to stir, and the long grasses and late-summer wildflowers shifted in the cool, damp air. Everything smelled rich and green.

Henry paid it all little mind, instead occupying himself by adjusting and readjusting his cuffs. "You don't have to do this," he said, unable to stop himself but knowing it was a waste of breath. Dawn was inevitable. They only needed to wait.

Five minutes passed. Ten. The violet light was turning pink, orange, and finally yellow.

If Abe had begun to feel discomfort, he hid it well: Henry searched his friend's face and only saw determination there, unyielding and fierce.

And then the sun began to tumble over the horizon in earnest. Abe sucked in a gasp and clenched his fists, his arms braced straight against his sides as the first rays hit him. Henry was loath to watch. The delicate flesh about Abe's temples, the lean, pale column of his throat, the hairy lengths of his forearms—all of his exposed skin began to redden. And then it began to sizzle, smoking here and there like water droplets on a hot skillet.

Abe groaned, falling to his knees. He pressed his hands over his face. Henry was ready with the blanket but Abe hissed, "Not yet."

"Abe! This is madness. You can't—"

"Not… yet…"

Henry waited another moment, stared aghast as blisters began to form, wretched, bloody things; he watched them multiply across Abe's body just as he'd warned Abe they would. Abe was moaning, his long frame finally crumpling to the ground as Henry threw the blanket over him.

It wasn't even half an hour after sunrise and Abe was totally incapacitated. Henry cursed himself. Why had he let it go so far? Why had he allowed Abe to attempt such a stunt in the first place? He had to get him back to the cabin, and quickly.

"Hold on," he said. "I'm going to lift you."

It was more physically awkward than anything else. Abe was a head taller than Henry and far lankier, but Henry gamely balanced Abe's weight against his chest, with Abe's face pressed into Henry's shirtfront, and made off back through the woods. Once inside, he immediately took Abe downstairs and laid him out on his own bed. Then he slowly pulled back the blanket.

"Oh, Abe. What in heaven's name were you thinking?" Henry murmured. Some of the wounds had begun to close, but the worst of them stood out angrily against Abe's flesh, raised and red-rimmed. Henry stroked Abe's hair back from his brow.

"I told you," said Abe, blinking up at Henry with bloodshot eyes, "I needed to know."

"Yes? And did reality prove your assumption correct?"

Abe nodded once, then winced. Henry rubbed a damp cloth down his throat and grimaced when he pulled it up and found that it was stained red with gore. Finally Abe said, "It did. You have always been an excellent teacher, Henry. But some things must be learned first hand."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Section to be continued in chapter 6.


	6. Chapter 6

_Then_

It took two days for Abe to heal completely. Henry attended to him, poured him glasses of blood-wine. As much as he hated how they'd come to it, he was glad enough to be at his friend's beckon call. He couldn't help but think back to the first time they'd maintained such an arrangement, but there was no need for bondage now… thank heaven for them both.

And yet like before, Abe listened to Henry's voice. Henry had retrieved a stack of books from the shelf and encouraged Abe to pick through them, and they embarked on a meaty volume bound in garnet leather: Herman Melville's _Moby-Dick_. The tale was new to them both. They stood, Henry fancied, on the brink of each page like great explorers.

Abe seemed particularly moved by that damned captain's plight, and so too of the narrator's; he sat in rapt attention as Henry read: "'There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge…'

"Abe—are you quite all right?"

Abe nodded. He was staring at Henry, a strange glint in his eye. "Yes. Go on."

Henry cleared his throat, and then: "'And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.'"

 

Life took on an agreeable cadence in the weeks after. Henry had long enjoyed maintaining normal human hours, sleeping during the night to better conduct business in the day-lit world; but for Abe, he readjusted. Every evening, they emerged from their separate rooms, Henry usually waking first and greeting Abe upstairs with a cup of hot Darjeeling—or a glass of blood-wine if he knew Abe was soon due to feed.

They spent many a productive hour running through the woods, sparring and training, and Henry was glad to see Abe grow ever-more comfortable with his powers.

They debated philosophy, Abe long since having devoured Henry's collection of Classics, over games of chess in which Henry put up a good fight but Abe almost invariably won.

They made improvements to the cabin, buttressed the subterranean rooms with stacked stones and mortar, hung pictures and a fine gilt mirror, all the better to feel more at home.

They hunted. Two or three times a month, they rode together into one of the nearby villages, or sometimes all the way to a proper town, and located the tavern. Henry paid for a couple of drinks as Abe found seats where they'd best be able to quietly observe the patrons… and mark their prey.

 

Henry had been truthful when he long ago told Abe that alliances between vampires were rare. Yes, easy blood was hard to come by—but moreso for Henry, no matter how he strove to refrain from cruelty it was still painful to witness his own horror reflected back at him by others of his kind. Indeed, aside from his tenure with the Union and those unhappy months spent in thrall of Thomas Crowley, Henry had by choice scarcely spent more than a fortnight in another vampire's company.

And yet Abe was different. Henry not only appreciated Abe's company – he found he _craved_ it.

Bashfulness would have led Henry to attribute this to the weight of their shared history. After all, Henry had watched Abe mature from a boy into a man, and from a man into one of the most capable warriors he'd ever met. With Henry's guidance, Abe had been instrumental in defeating the most despicable scheme the vampire species had yet devised— Yes. If only it was something so simple.

He knew better. Abe, by Henry's own word, was interesting. The migratory patterns of certain bird varieties were also _interesting_ , but the mere idea of them didn't make Henry want to cry out to the heavens in agony or exhilaration; he knew not which. Down to his marrow, Henry recognized well enough that there was something primal in his near-constant awareness of Abraham Lincoln. Respect and admiration for the man. Yes, love of him too.

Also: he'd always wanted Abe.

Sharing his body had long ago become easy: he had taken so many lovers. But sharing his blood was a step apart. And sharing his soul? Well. Among all those he'd known since Edeva, all whose passing had simply caused Henry grief, he'd been driven to bring Abe _back_. For the first time in nearly three hundred years, Henry knew he'd found in Abe a companion of his own heart, someone who could see him for all he was.

He held onto this thought, grasped it like a polished stone. Guarded it like a small, perfect treasure. Waited.

Watched. Until eventually, Abe looked back.

 

If tact demanded Henry ease into voicing his hope of what the future would bring, he had few qualms in speaking about the past. He described the misery he'd endured during his first years as a vampire, the humiliation he felt for himself even as he mourned the deaths of Edeva and their unborn child—

In truth: after Henry was turned, after Crowley cast him off, he spent the better part of a decade in desperate isolation, hiding away out of necessity during the day and out of melancholic dread most nights. He had with him a meager collection of belongings. A few sets of clothes, a kettle, a shaving kit and washbasin, a pistol and a small cache of ammunition – and a modest selection of books. These he would come to prize above all. In those long, lonely hours, he retreated inward, appeasing his mind just as his body ached with hunger, every thread of him over-stimulated and hyperaware.

At night, when his senses were strongest, Henry listened to the thoughts of men.

Not only—he perceived their minds, very nearly _knew_ them, over great distances. And he heard their beating hearts. The creek that ran behind his hurriedly-built shack fed into a navigable river more than a mile away, and he often picked out the chatter of natives passing by in small boats, smelled their sweat and salt and, above all, the perfume of their living blood.

The temptation was maddening. He found himself all but lost to it, traitorous fangs descending as his brain buzzed with need. But by some unknown fortune he gathered his wits and waited, held fast, to capture and drink the blood of animals. Birds. Rodents. And deer, when he could find them.

It was never enough.

Then one predawn morning, a couple of vandals – Englishmen, he realized, like himself – ran through the open woods, on the lam but off their course. They stumbled upon the cabin, and Henry himself, asleep. He had no gold, nothing of value; still they meant to take all he could give. One tried to grab Henry by the shoulders while the other raised a bludgeon to brain him.

Half-starved as he was, he took them down easily. He drank of them easily.

"It was intoxicating," said Henry. He and Abe sat by the fireplace in a couple of leather chairs he'd recently procured from New York City by way of a nearby town. It was a cool night, and damp, as September eked into October; but the coals burned red. "I was covered in gore. And yet I'd never before thought with such precision, or moved with such quickness, or felt so strong— Until that moment. Do you see? It was only then that I understood. By giving in to my urges I could also learn to control them. As grotesque as I may have been, I would find the strength to _choose_ my victims."

Abe sipped his whisky. "Killing in order to pay your debts to society?"

"In a matter of speaking," Henry agreed. "So long as there are creatures like ourselves – butchers, though enlightened – there will always be death. But when we have our wits about us, we're capable of offering immense recompense."

"Have you ever stopped to think that even your supposed villains might be missed? Or that you might be worse than them?"

"Judge not, lest ye be judged. Yes." Henry nodded somberly, uncorking the bottle to top off both their glasses. Certainly he'd considered it: even the most terrible humans, the very vilest members of his own kind, had once known kindness. He met Abe's eye. "But what choice do we have? Surely not to claim the life of the innocent."

Abe's mouth narrowed into a scowl. "Don't kill at all. Vampires do so to slake a thirst. But what if it isn't necessary?"

"You speak of a cure," said Henry. "Believe me. I've been down that path before. From what I have found, immortality cannot be had without a price."

"No. I speak of mercy. Why take everything when one can rationally survive on less?"

"An attractive notion." Henry bowed his head. "Abraham, I must say: it is no wonder that you made a career out of politics."

 

From time to time, Henry tucked a newspaper into his saddlebag on the way out of town. He enjoyed keeping up with current events, and left the papers on hand for Abe to peruse at his leisure—but Abe paid the gesture little mind.

"Aren't you curious about what they're saying about you?" Henry joked once, offhandedly.

Abe fixed him with a stare. "It isn't me they're writing about."

He had a point. Verily, the papers would have him rebranded as a saint, slain for his nation's sins. The real things that had driven Abe into the spotlight, his personal trials and tribulations, his ambitions, had stemmed from little else than his relentless drive to kill vampires. Perhaps it was only fitting that now he'd become one, the world would remember him for everything but the truth.

Perhaps Abe _wasn't_ quite his old self. He rarely mentioned the life he'd led before and those he'd left behind. There was a new stillness to him. He was as perceptive as ever, but more reticent. Even the things Henry had once found remarkable about him – his commitment to keeping a written record of his life, his love of spinning yarns and sharing personal anecdotes – were altered. His passions had changed.

And when Henry watched him, more often than not he found that Abe watched back. It was a dance of sorts. They tugged at each other's peripheries, swung round a single point like two moons beholden to a single planet's gravity.

Still, there were distractions. Henry read insatiably, and Abe—Well. When they came from Washington, Abe brought several blank journals with him. Where he might have once detailed the day's events, recounted his latest skirmishes, Abe now spent hours sketching people and objects and animals, or anything else he took a liking to. They were captured in blue-black ink, inexpertly but with remarkable intricacy and attention to detail. Gradually, he improved.

Then after finishing for the night, he would throw a cloak about his shoulders and set out on a walk. He never explicitly invited Henry along. Henry supposed that if he'd asked, Abe would have welcomed his company readily enough—but Henry was stubborn, and moreover, he was glad to grant Abe the time alone. Often he'd return dusted with snow, his hair tousled and his clothes disheveled; and in good spirits. Henry was glad of that too.

But he couldn't stop himself from asking, "Where did you go?"

"Come off it, Henry," Abe said, running a hand over his head – and remarkably, retrieving a twig from his hair. "You've followed me before."

This was true. Henry had on more than one occasion gone after Abe. He trailed along as Abe strode into the night, keeping far back enough that he was sure Abe hadn't noticed him. Then again, he now realized, maybe Abe simply decided to ignore Henry's intrusion. And then again, Henry almost always lost track of Abe before long.

"Join me," Abe said, "and you'll see."

Henry nodded. The next night, he took Abe up on the offer.

It was cold, well below freezing, and a thin crust of ice and snow encased the woodland floor about the cabin. Henry wore a cloak mainly out of habit – the temperature didn't bother him, but he liked the feel of the wool against his skin – and a high, well broken-in pair of boots. He tied his hair into a neat plait.

A tendril of anticipation worked its way through his guts – excitement and taut, keen interest.

Abe waited for him to lock up, and then inclined his head. "Well?"

Henry smiled. "Lead the way."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Section to be concluded in chapter 7.


	7. Chapter 7

_Then_

"You can't mean to climb all the way to the top," Henry said, craning his neck. The old oak towered at least ninety feet above them. Indeed, there was scarcely a taller tree within view—which was of course why Abe had chosen it.

Abe was already unlacing his boots. "Of course I do." After another minute, he tracked barefoot through the snow, coming round to the opposite side of the thick trunk, and in one swift movement he set his clawed fingers to the bark and began to ascend. When he reached the lowest line of branches, he swung a leg around one to steady himself before glancing pointedly at Henry.

"All right," Henry muttered. He kept his boots on, and the worn leather soles made it difficult to find purchase on the icy bark, but he reached Abe's level without much of a struggle.

Abe said, "There's an opening a good ways up. The branch there is sturdy enough to hold us both… just try not to jostle it too much."

The whole thing had a whiff of absurdity about it. But Henry recognized Abe's earnestness, and it seemed at once that he was being permitted to witness something very personal, a ritual Abe had come to enjoy. He nodded, letting Abe climb ahead before he put his own claws to work and followed after.

Five minutes later they sat side by side on a wide bough—

And Henry gasped. The view was incredible. Indeed, from that vantage he could see the crest of Mount Marcy, snow-capped and blue-hued in the moonlight. There were swaths of trees that gave way to rocky clearings, and to one side, a lake; it fed a thin creek which many miles on became the mighty Hudson. Aside from the narrow puff of smoke escaping from their cabin's chimney, there was nary a sign of human existence.

Henry spent several long minutes taking it all in, his face no doubt caught in an inelegant gape, before he realized Abe was watching him. He let out a little laugh. "Abraham, this is extraordinary. You mean to tell me you come here every night?"

Abe shrugged, shifting forward on the branch. "I find it clears my head. Sometimes spending so much time underground—Well. It taxes the nerves."

"Yes," Henry agreed. He thought, _You get used to it._ But this: seeing the world from on high; feeling the cold wind on his face, deciphering its roar as it pushed through the forest… It seemed the sort of thing that shouldn't be taken for granted.

At last he said, "Thank you."

"The location's your doing," Abe replied. "You chose it when you built the cabin. I'm just taking advantage of what's at hand. I suppose that's what I've always done."

"You're resourceful, and have been since you were a boy, standing up to that wretched hag of a vampire with your knives and garlic—," here Henry smiled, "and if I recall correctly, a leather collar. A marvelous idea, though I can only imagine what you told the tanner when you commissioned its creation. No, perhaps 'resourceful' doesn't cover it."

"Foolhardy, more like." Abe swallowed, and then: "Henry: if I had been killed that night—"

"Abe…"

"Hear me out. If I'd drowned, would you have taken someone else as your pupil?"

Henry considered this. That night on the riverbank seemed far removed, a distant island of memory to be visited infrequently, if ever at all. He hated to think what would have happened to the world if Abraham hadn't survived that first brutal skirmish. If he himself hadn't been there to intervene—

"I'm not sure," Henry admitted. "It was before the Union had even been formed. The vampires of the South were wretchedly offensive to me, yes, but they hadn't yet begun to band together or formulate their plans.

"I told you I meant to kill the woman vampire that night. Certainly, it was sickening to know she had a taste for innocent children. But the truth is that I took an interest in her because her activities threatened to expose my own. The remains of one of her victims, those of a five-year old girl, were uncovered not far from my home. If the authorities—or worse, an angry mob, came snooping around my property with torches and pitchforks in hope of associating me with those murders, I would have almost certainly been forced to flee."

"I seem to remember that you did flee. You abandoned your cabin. The rooms were filled in with earth as if they'd never been there at all," Abe said softly.

Henry nodded. "Quite true. But that was due to a— _miscalculation_ on my part."

"Mm?" Abe arched a brow.

"Even when you were still recovering, bedridden, I realized that vampires like the woman who'd pummeled you – those who would indiscriminately kill, squander innocent blood again and again – needed to be stopped. I trained you as best as I knew how. But I also entertained notions that I could send you on your errands while remaining in the public eye; or the eye of the vampire population, that is. I was mistaken."

"They threatened retribution?"

"And they followed through with it." Indeed, the wounds Henry sustained as a result of the attack had almost killed him. He'd been incapacitated for a month. Pitiful and alone. And he knew then that for Abe's sake, indeed to ensure the continued existence of them both, he would need help. It was not long after he'd moved to St. Louis that he contacted a couple of very old acquaintances in New York City, and as luck would have it, they'd been expecting to hear from him.

"Abe: you are something special," Henry said, low but determined. "I've never doubted that I became entangled in _your_ destiny – not the other way around."

"I never asked for such a destiny," said Abe. He was gazing into the darkness, his eyes moving here and there as if to pick out every distant shape. "Dedicating my life to revenge afforded me little happiness; and it stripped me of peace whenever I found it."

"There is still time for peace."

Abe bowed his head. "Did I do right by her?"

Henry knew exactly who this _her_ was – and that the question wasn't meant for him. Silently, he reached out and pressed his palm against Abe's, lacing their fingers together. Abe didn't pull away.

They remained there for the better part of an hour. Henry sensed dawn's approach – they had another sixty, seventy minutes before the sun would pour over the horizon – but he was reluctant to broach the subject of retiring.

Or, for that matter, how best to get down.

Abe laughed then, apparently catching Henry's bewilderment. "Follow me and you'll be fine."

 

After that, Abe's nightly ritual was no longer just his own. Henry found himself looking forward to the time they spent in the treetop, sitting together; talking and passing a flask back and forth between them; staring out into the darkness as winter melted into an early spring. Animals crawled out from their holes. The woods were alight with fresh, green growth, crocuses that determinedly pushed through the last of the snow, tender leaf buds, sprouts of ferns and skunk cabbage, all of it sweetly scented and new.

Even Abe seemed almost content. On that perch, far from the trappings of humanity, the cabin— the life that Henry insisted they build, he smiled often. His dialogue veered into thoughtful, good-humored observations. He spoke of his sketchbook, and the self-taught techniques he thought could improve his hand.

He said, "I never expected that there was so much to be seen." And what he meant was this: it wasn't until he was made a vampire that he knew how to look. Or so Henry thought.

He held Henry's hand, and watched Henry's mouth as he talked—

Oh, and all at once Henry realized that this _was_ the life they were building. Of course it was. What else could it be when Abe was no longer content to watch Henry's mouth? What, when he leaned forward to taste it?

The kiss had all the markings of a dream—but perhaps that was only because Henry had dreamt of it often. It was so slow that rather than appease the ache in Henry's chest, it fueled it. Fortunately neither of them needed to surface for air. Henry pushed his tongue into Abe's mouth and Abe carded a hand through Henry's hair, and traced Henry's jaw and throat with his fingers. Henry hummed appreciatively and pressed in closer, craving the contact, wanting more.

And if they'd been anywhere but in a tree, eighty feet up, he'd have gotten it.

By then Henry was used to climbing down without a struggle. He leaned into Abe the moment they were back on the ground, corralling him against the trunk as he fussed, his hands less steady than he would've liked, to unbutton Abe's jacket and shirt. But before Henry could work the first one free, Abe took both of Henry's hands in his own and recaptured Henry's mouth, teasing Henry's lips apart. Henry allowed it. Of course he did. He was maddeningly hard; but Hell, so was Abe: Henry could make out the line of his cock through his trousers, and Abe groaned down Henry's throat when Henry pressed the whole length of his hand against him.

Then Henry did it again, with more pressure.

Abe hissed and bit down. Henry's tongue caught the brunt of it, one of Abe's dull – human – cuspids clamping hard enough to draw blood. Abe pulled back abruptly and raised a hand to his mouth. Even in the intermittent light, it was obvious that his fingertips came back stained red.

Henry licked them clean. "Shh," he said, moving in again to nuzzle his way down Abe's throat. "It's nothing."

"Just…" Abe breathed, and then took Henry's arms and pushed him back enough to look him in the eye. "Warn me next time."

Henry grinned wickedly. "Consider yourself warned."

Then he fell to his knees and began to undo Abe's flies. He was surprised, but well pleased, so find that Abe wasn't wearing drawers – all the better to take Abe's cock in his hand and work his fingers down the shaft with a couple of neat turns of his wrist. Abe didn't feel cold; not to Henry, who was as far away from his last meal as Abe was. But there was no heat. Henry didn't understand how a vampiric body could produce arousal without an accompanying flush, without scent, but oh, he was ever glad that it did. He ran the tip of his tongue over the head of Abe's cock and continued to pump—

And then he felt Abe's hand on his shoulder. "Henry…"

Henry looked up inquiringly, only to see that Abe's eyes were screwed shut. He was slowly shaking his head back and forth, his hair skewed against the tree. "I haven't… not with a man."

"Do you want this?" Henry asked, regretfully releasing Abe and leaning back on his haunches. "Abraham?"

Abe let out a long breath and opened his eyes. His pupils were blown, endlessly black. "Yes."

"Good." Henry smiled. "If you want me to stop, or you don't like it… Just tell me."

Henry waited for Abe to nod – only once, but with finality – before setting back to work. At first he mouthed round the head, laving at the underside, and then he took him down in earnest. One of Henry's hands served to steady him, his fingers splayed on Abe's thigh, as he unfastened his trousers and freed himself with the other.

It was almost too easy to develop a rhythm. He relaxed his jaw and took Abe as deeply as he was able, and then eased back. And all the while he ran his fist up and down his own cock, coaxing himself to the edge. If only he could stretch this out, right out… Yes, but who was he kidding?

"Henry! I can't—" Abe came with a shudder, his hand again falling to Henry's shoulder—but this time his fingers grappled on Henry's coat and clenched onto skin and bone. Henry swallowed. He waited for Abe to recover before he pulled away and quickened his pace, stroked his cock for another moment, two, and then spilled into his own palm.

" _Abraham._ "

Henry cultivated honesty in himself. To a vampire, sex provoked but a shadow of the pleasure that came with feeding. And yet right then, nearly folding over into the dirt at Abe's feet—Henry was shaking. Dazzled. It had been, by his own word as a gentleman, the finest release he'd had in decades. He thought, _At last._

They sat together for a while, after. Henry was tucked up against the tree, and Abe was beside him, neatly leaning into the crook of Henry's arm. It was a good arrangement to run his hand through Abe's hair, and scratch at the base of Abe's neck in the gentle way he knew Abe liked.

Above them, the trunk was marked with ten even slashes: ruts where Abe's claws had found purchase and then _ripped_ a path through the bark.

Abe said, almost whispered, "I often feel that I no longer know myself. My mind—my body is a stranger to me." He was silent for a while. Long enough that Henry thought he might be waiting for a response. And then: "But this doesn't come as a surprise. There have been… _urges_ in me which I dared not name for fear of summoning them into being. And yet I always understood. I knew them for what they were.

"That night I awoke in your home—You were reading _Macbeth_. I opened my eyes and saw you there, not two feet away, smiling down at me. It was probably just delirium, the laudanum you'd given me for the pain in my ribs, but I thought you were the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. And that you should have chanced upon me. Saved my life! It was the damnedest thing to have that rug ripped out from under my feet when I realized _what_ you were."

"I am glad," said Henry, "that you were able to overcome your aversion."

It wasn't until the words were out of his mouth that he comprehended them: he'd delved into Abe's mortal mind more times than he could count, but never once had he determined with any confidence that what Abe felt for him – admiration and trust and need – were born out of more than necessity. And yet Henry had wished they were. Oh, how he'd wanted something greater.

"What now?" Abe asked.

Henry leaned forward and pressed his lips onto the crown of Abe's head. His hair smelled of wood and earth; nothing of himself, or his clean, cold body. Had this moment been what they'd always been hurtling towards? Henry didn't know. And for once in his life, beyond all his preoccupations with fate, he found he didn't care.

He said, "Let's go home."

 

Abraham Lincoln had been a vampire for eleven months. He was fifty-seven, a fact belied by his strength and speed—and appearance. Like the scar his beard once hid, innumerable other blemishes had faded from his skin. His wrinkles were fewer, and even some of the more entrenched lines about his mouth and on his brow, the crows feet which lengthened every year he'd held office, seemed diminished. All but a few persistent grays were excised from his hair. And the smattering of freckles on Abe's shoulders, a tender, boyish feature that became Henry's first port-of-call when he was nuzzling his way down Abe's back, one day simply vanished.

The restorative properties of vampiric blood knew no bounds.

But they came at a price.

So when Abe said, "I will never take another life," it certainly shouldn't have caught Henry off guard.

Sunset was still an hour away, though they'd both been awake for a while, lying in bed, spooning, drifting in and out of conversation. Abe's breath tickled Henry's nape as he spoke, and so he felt the words as much as he heard them. "It's a promise I made when I was young. One I have to renew."

"You would starve yourself?" Henry asked, haltingly.

Abe was silent for a moment. And then: "No."

"Then how do you propose—"

"It's not written that we must take the lives of our victims, Henry."

Henry rolled over to look at Abe. "You've made that case before, but the danger is too great. If you were recognized by just _one_ of them you could incite an entire population into hysteria."

"The last time we hunted, I tested myself. It—it wasn't easy." Abe swallowed. "I struggled to stop. But I did, Henry. I left him in the alley outside his own shop. Unconscious, but _alive_."

Henry thought back to that night, dimly recalling that Abe left him in the tavern to feed on his own. There was nothing peculiar about that. They took victims apart as often as they shared them. And then again, yes: Abe had been lit with a peculiar energy when they met up a mile out of town several hours later. Henry had been thrilled to see him like that. He couldn't stop himself from leaning over in his saddle to grab Abe's shirtfront and pull him in for a kiss.

Now he frowned at the memory. "How do you know he isn't waiting for you?"

"I left no evidence. I used my own blood to seal the wound on his throat—besides, he stank of ale. No doubt he woke up the next morning with a devilishly pounding head." Abe smiled at that, but then his expression turned serious. "It's the only way. I've seen enough death in my time to fill a hundred lifetimes, and been the cause of much of it. It's too heavy a burden for one man to bear."

Henry looked at him. Met those familiar eyes, blue as a Wiltshire sky on a summer day: the memory of a memory. He never meant to deny Abe anything.

"All right," he said, after a while. "But you must be cautious."

Abe was that and more. He hunted three or four times a month where before he only had to do so twice, but he was no longer limited to taking down the vile, depraved, or sick: a hearty farmer could more easily recover from a vampire's attention. When Henry joined Abe on these excursions, he was ever impressed by Abe's restraint – and the care, the _empathy_ he displayed to each of his victims.

If Abe disapproved of Henry's continued dedication to pursuing evil-doers, he made no mention of it.

 

In June, Henry gave Abe a set of oil paints, twenty-five tubes arranged in a handsome wooden case, along with an easel. Abe soon began constructing his own canvases. He carefully laid out his materials in the room that had once been his.

The other room was simply _theirs_.

 

In August, an advertisement in the paper caught Abe's eye: the Palladium in Albany would be hosting a production of _The Magic Flute_. Henry bought two tickets. They sat in the very last row, near the rear door, in case Abe felt uncomfortable and needed to leave.

They stayed until the very last note was played.

There in the darkened theatre, Henry took Abe's hand and held it tight.

 

In November, Henry realized that he was happy. Happier than he had any right to expect.

 

And in April, two years after Henry took Abe from his coffin, he received a letter.

Before they fled Washington, Henry left a forwarding address with the Capitol post office, and so he was used to receiving mail at his box locally – though only a few times a year, and only ever in regards to his various financial holdings.

But this envelope was different. It had been mailed directly, not forwarded, its postage validated less than a week before. The neat script: _Mssrs. Sturges and Lincoln, Town of Keene, New York,_ was instantly recognizable.

"What is it, Henry?" Abe was staring at him. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Henry smiled thinly. "You're more right than you know."

A sinking feeling settling into his guts, he thumbed the wax seal open and pulled out the single sheet of fine, ivory paper. There was only one line of writing: _Your presence is required._

Above it was a familiar crest: St. George wrestling with the dragon, and the motto _Mors Certissima_.

 

When the war ended, Henry allowed himself to settle into the comfortable belief that he could put certain things behind him. That carving out a life with Abe – helping Abe cope with his new existence – would diminish the ills of the world around them. He wanted nothing more than to start anew.

The Union thought otherwise.

They needed their president.

 

Abe was furious, pacing back and forth in front of the blazing fireplace. The cabin, the space they shared, suddenly seemed very small. "No, Henry. You cannot ask this of me."

"I'm not asking. The Union—"

"To Hell with the Union. I owe them nothing, and won't be summoned like a pup to his master's heel. To think that _you_ would consider submitting to their beacon call…"

"You would be dead if it wasn't for them," Henry said quietly.

Abe stopped. "I would be dead, Henry, if you hadn't deprived me of it."

Oh, not this again – Henry bristled at the words but didn't refute them. Instead he pressed on: "Even before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, the Union was strategizing, making plans about what would happen after the war was over."

"They assumed victory was within reach?"

"Of course. As would any governing body worth its salt. There was talk then of creating a set of guidelines by which vampires would be required to live. You spent decades in legal practice, Abraham. Surely you realize the importance of the law."

Abe nodded. He finally seemed to be calming down; with a sigh he settled onto the settee beside Henry. "It would be a sort of Code of Hammurabi?"

"Yes. The Union spent years and tremendous amounts of resources rooting out the Southern vampires. It's now their intention to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again." Henry set his hand on Abe's thigh. "And if I know my old… colleagues, they want you to help draft this document."

"Why are you suddenly so interested in it? One letter from them and you mean to leave?"

"I don't have a choice."

Abe looked him in the eye. "There's always a choice."

 

In the end, Henry packed himself a simple bag: a couple of sets of clothes, an extra pair of dark glasses, a flask full of his best whisky, and an old, old copy of his very favorite book. When he got to New York City, he would explain Abe's absence and the Union would simply have to do without him. Henry would make sure they did.

Any scruples he had about leaving Abe to fend for himself were based, Henry knew well enough, in his own desire to be needed—but Abe was certainly strong enough.

"I won't be gone long; no more than a month. I promise you."

Abe had his hands pushed into his pockets. He was looking glum, gaunt and tired. "Take as long as you need," he said, but there wasn't any energy behind it. "Travel safely, my friend."

Well. Henry would never leave it like that. He took Abe in his arms and with some effort – namely maneuvering onto his tip-toes – he pressed his forehead to Abe's. The he kissed him. After a moment, he felt Abe shift, and his arms came round Henry's back. He wrenched his fingers into the fabric of Henry's jacket and pulled him even closer.

"Abraham," Henry said, after a time. "I love you."

Abe's mouth stretched into a taut smile. "Good luck."


	8. Chapter 8

_Now_

Ten hours after Peter – one Peter Wesley Pryor of Palo Alto, Henry found out after rifling through the man's wallet – drew his last breath, Henry stood staring out at the Pacific Ocean. The morning fog had burned off from the cliff-side and breakers, leaving behind a clear sky that reflected endlessly off the water. It was almost too bright for his unprotected eyes. Even when viewed behind one of the wide, smoke-tinted windows in his lounge, he struggled to keep from squinting; but he couldn't bring himself to close the blinds.

He had his phone in his hand, his thumb poised over an intimately known but seldom-used contact record. It read: Rare Books. After he pushed "send," it rang six times, seven…

And then: "Porter, Smythe, and Morse, Jill speaking. How may I help you?"

Henry was taken aback by the perky, youthful voice, but his reply was smooth enough. "This is Franklin Dodge. I'd like to speak to one of the proprietors… Mr. Smythe, if he's available."

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Smythe doesn't take calls from the public. All inquiries or acquisition requests go through the sales department."

Henry smiled grimly. "Oh, I think he'll take a call from me."

Three minutes later, the on-hold music – Britten's _The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra_ , Henry recognized with some amusement – cut out and was replaced by a soft drawl: "Franklin Dodge? Now there's an old chestnut… It's been a while, Henry."

"Almost sixty years," Henry agreed. "I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time, Nathaniel. I know the book business must be booming."

"Yes. We recently came into possession of a first edition Donne. _Collected Works_. Perhaps you'd be interested in viewing it?"

"I'm afraid I've called about certain _other_ services you and your companions are known to provide."

"We… retired some time ago." 

"That matters little. You owe me a favor. And now I'm calling it in."

Smythe cleared his throat. "What exactly do you have in mind?"

Henry told him.

 

Before Benjamin Porter, Nathaniel Smythe, and William Morse earned a reputation as the finest antiquarian booksellers in Las Vegas, they operated a small, highly-specialized consulting firm. To the right people, the bookshop was at that time merely a front for Triad Associates, LLC. And Triad was a front for the sort of cash-on-the-barrelhead, no-questions-asked criminal operation that had blossomed the world over for millennia.

Yet everyone knew that Porter, Smythe, and Morse were the best.

Among their specialties were economic and digital theft; fraud; illicit trade; kidnapping and imprisonment; blackmail; and when a fat wad of banknotes was on offer, for they were businessmen first and vampires second, murder.

Long before that, they worked for Henry. Or rather, they volunteered their skills to the Union, trailing and taking out targets when it was required of them. They also, remarkably, spent several years as personal bodyguards to the President of the United States. They hesitated to call it an honor, and Smythe in particular never forgot that Lincoln had scarcely bothered to learn their names, but it wasn't a bad gig to list on the old CV.

And before that, they were gentlemen bandits of Hounslow Heath. Twelve years, two hundred and seventy-three private coaches, and thousands of pounds' worth of gold, silver, jewelry, and personal property: to say they had a good run was an understatement. They fought and fucked and made merry and _lived_ in the only way worth doing… until they found themselves in shackles for their trouble. When they were tried, led into the Old Bailey like three prize turkeys, neither judge nor jury cared a whit that the Mssrs. had never killed anyone of importance. They faced the gallows.

Then a funny thing happened. The war against the colonies was going poorly; King George was throwing everything at the problem that he could. Germans, Natives—and vampires. Under the direction of the Minister of Defense, a dozen condemned criminals were selected to receive the gift of eternal life, provided they vowed to eliminate revolutionary forces in the name of the king.

Benjamin Porter, Nathaniel Smythe, and William Morse were among them.

They suffered during the voyage to Massachusetts, unused to their new powers, delirious and over-stimulated, sick with hunger even as _The Duchess_ rocked through a mighty squall. Indeed, the ship never made it to port. But three passengers managed to swim ashore.

And half a day after Henry dialed their number, they stood on his doorstep.

 

It was well after midnight when the two black Land Rovers rolled down Henry's driveway. Henry monitored their progress in quad-view, each screen linked to a night vision-enhanced camera feed from the exterior of his property. They parked several yards from the entryway, and there was a pause before three men got out: one from the first vehicle and two from the second. They stood there for a minute, talking, and then approached the door.

Henry met them there. "Thank you for coming."

"I'm not sure we were given an alternative," said Smythe, extending a well-manicured hand.

"Just the same," Henry said, taking it – and then those of Porter and Morse – before ushering them inside, "you have my gratitude. This isn't something I can do alone. From what I've been able to determine, the building will be heavily guarded. Perhaps more than any other corporate campus in Sunnyvale."

The three shared a glance. Smythe's mouth stretched into a smile, but it was Morse who spoke, "Your dear Mr. Lincoln isn't being held in Sunnyvale."

"But Praxis Industries—"

"Is based there, yes. However, their auxiliary research lab is located some fifty miles to the east. That's where they carry out their more _sensitive_ projects. They own ten thousand acres in San Joaquin County, but the lab is small in comparison. Two nondescript facilities connected by a skywalk – and twenty levels of subbasement that stretch well beyond the lab's aboveground footprint."

"In other words," said Smythe, "'heavily guarded' is the understatement of the year."

Porter let out a gleeful little laugh before he finally spoke, "Henry, you always did know how to deliver a challenge." Of the three, he was the only one to have retained more than a scrap of his original Kentish accent, and his voice was lilting, happy. "It's been so long since we've had the pleasure of taking part in a good, honest row."

He was, Henry thought suddenly, a bit mad.

But Hell, so were they all.

Smythe cut back in, "First things first. The journey has been long. My associates and I are parched. Henry, please tell me you're still a sommelier."

"Well— Yes." A few minutes later, Henry set out three glasses and filled them with blood-wine.

Morse sniffed at his before taking a long, satisfied gulp. "What do you have in there with it? Cabernet Sauvignon?"

"Russian River Valley, ninety-seven," Henry confirmed.

"An excellent year," said Smythe. He licked his lips. "Which is why I must ask: are you not thirsty yourself?"

In fact, Henry could always drink. But he was as far from thirsty as he'd been in years: Peter had been young and strong and brimming with life, and Henry drained him to a husk. The recollection made him shiver. He said at last, simply, "No."

Smythe met Henry's eye. "No. I expect not. You did a number on him, didn't you? Sloppy." He strode to the other side of the room to inspect one of the mahogany panels that flanked the television. Then he raised a hand, dragged a finger through an errant splatter of blood— and licked his finger clean. "Decapitation, I think."

Henry clenched and unclenched his fists. "Damn it, Nathaniel. I don't see how that—"

"Your victim was top brass in the lab we'll be breaking into in, oh," Smythe checked his watch, "three hours. I'd say that makes for more than circumstantial evidence as far as the authorities are concerned. You've set up a lovely life for yourself here, Henry, and I'd hate for you to _lose_ it. Which is why you and William will be spending the rest of the night cleaning up the mess you made."

"I'm going with you."

"Be reasonable," said Morse. "It will be dangerous."

"I think I know a thing or two about danger," Henry snapped. Then he drew in a steadying breath – it was a silly habit, but it helped him. "Look: Abraham has been in captivity for nearly five years. The first face he sees after being released should be a friendly one." What he didn't add was that he wanted to tear Abe's gaolers limb-from-limb, rend them asunder, _break_ them in ways that would make what he did to Peter seem like a frolic.

Porter must have read the sentiment in Henry's expression. "They took something of great value to you, and they'll pay for it. You needn't worry about that."

"But it's curious that it wasn't until now that you to learned of his circumstances," Smythe said, idly. He'd drained his glass and was pouring himself another. "And strangely fortuitous that you did at all. Tell me, when was the last time you saw him?"

Henry frowned. It had been… a decade, at least. No. There was no point in lying to himself. He knew it had been exactly fourteen years, five months, and twenty-seven days. He said, almost whispered, "Too long."

The three shared another glance. And then Morse said, "I can do this alone. It's a two hour job. Two and a half, tops. Henry: your scientist. Did he have any personal effects on him?"

"Just this." Henry handed over Peter's wallet.

Morse flipped it open and inspected the driver's license. "Good looking fellow. And an organ donor—mighty considerate." He grinned wolfishly. "Where's the body?"

 

Henry was uncomfortable. The suit Smythe had given him – the sort of strappy, full-body number favored by black ops types everywhere – felt too tight across his chest, over his shoulders and in his groin. Getting it on had been a challenge. Sitting in it, even in the Rover's roomy passenger seat, was worse. He itched himself irritably.

"Careful," Smythe said without looking away from the road. "That kit cost ten thousand dollars. I expect to have it returned free of damage."

"Is there a reason it's full of wires beyond simple sadism?"

"The original design was meant to deflect the wearer's body heat signature. But seeing as that isn't a problem for us… William altered it. It now operates as a warp drive for time travel."

Henry looked at him. He was hazy, and yes, anxious enough that he would've been prepared to believe the suit was ready for anything up to and including the black void of space. "Really?"

"Yes, and I'm Johnny Cash. Get a grip and calm down." Smythe's eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror. "Ben? How's it coming?"

"Getting closer," said Porter. He was typing rapidly on his notebook, the pink tip of his tongue poking through pursed lips. His face looked ghoulish in the blue glow of the screen. "The generator's located at the rear corner of the eastern building, which means we'll need to take a little detour before going inside."

"Anything else?" Smythe asked.

"Yes. I was able to isolate the security system from the main grid. Once it's neutralized we'll have… Oh. Fifteen, twenty minutes to get in and out of there."

Henry started. "Fifteen minutes? How can we possibly move that quickly?"

Porter picked up a tablet from the seat beside him. He tapped the screen a couple of times before handing it over to Henry. Then he smiled. "We have a treasure map."

It wasn't exactly that – not to Henry's eye – but it was certainly a fine blueprint. He moved the image up and down, left and right, before zooming in on a hallway marked QUARANTINE. It ran near the very bottom of the lab, and was flanked by several detox and security kiosks: where better to hold a vampire hostage?

"But what's to stop them from sealing all the doors once we're in there? We'll be trapped."

"What indeed?" Porter replied, his smile widening. Henry thought he caught a flash of fang before he turned his attention back to his notebook. "What indeed..."

 

The plan was this: Smythe would remotely seize the control room while Porter and Henry took one of the service stairwells down to SB-13. Their timing was ideal – minimal laboratory staff on duty and a complacent nightshift security detail. And in the event things didn't go according to plan—Well. Henry had no choice but to leave contingencies to the experts. It was, after all, why he'd called Smythe in the first place. When it came to it, he didn't care _how_ he got Abe back, only that he did.

According to Smythe's GPS, they were less than three miles away from the auxiliary checkpoint. Smythe reached between the seats, palm up, and without a beat of hesitation Porter handed him a gun.

"This one's loaded with tranquilizer darts," Smythe said when he caught Henry looking at it. "But of course we have the real deal for when things get nasty."

At Smythe's signal, they pulled their masks on, thick black socks that fit snugly over their heads. The suits were equipped with cameras and wireless mics, so even from his station in the Land Rover, Smythe would be able to see what was happening – and intervene, if necessary.

"Touch this," Porter pointed to a small button on the side of his left-hand goggle, "for night-vision. I know what you're thinking. We're vampires, yeah? But I think you'll agree that even _our_ eyes can't make much out in complete darkness."

"What a wondrous world we live in," crooned Smythe.

"You know," Henry said, "for a couple of retirees, you seem remarkably at home."

"Old habits…" Smythe replied. He tapped out a short pattern the steering wheel, concentrating; before long, the checkpoint was in view. The Rover rolled to a halt in front of the little booth, and Smythe raised his gun just as the guard was sliding the window open. It only took one shot. The dart hit the man in his throat and he spent several moments swatting at it before he fell forward onto the counter, unconscious. Smythe reached inside the booth and tipped a lever to raise the gate.

"Ben?"

"Take the next left, then circle round to the back."

Henry's goggles tinted the world red. There were less than a dozen cars parked throughout the lot, and all the area around them was perfectly still. If it hadn't been for Porter, who trotted from the Rover with a small metal box in his hands – this he affixed to the outer door of the generator's containment shed – Henry wouldn't have baulked to be told the place was closed, abandoned… But then Porter's box blew the door off its hinges. He didn't even wait for the smoke to clear before going in.

"What does he mean to do?" Henry asked, tentatively.

Smythe turned his head. He was wearing his mask, so Henry couldn't read his expression – but he could guess at it: pity. "Pull the plug on Praxis Industries."

As if on cue, the lights went out. First those in the building, the visible rooms and corridors, and then the spotlights outside. The generator groaned.

"No trouble?" Smythe asked as Porter reclaimed his seat in the Rover.

"Quite a sophisticated bit of work. Fail safes upon fail safes," Porter replied. He'd already got back to work typing. "But nothing I couldn't handle."

"Good." Smythe pulled to a stop in front of the building's service entrance and took the notebook from Porter. "All right, just like we agreed. Remember, Henry. We're on a tight schedule. No dramatics. Grab him and go—and save the honeymoon for the ride out."

Henry scowled. It was impossible to know what the conditions of Abe's captivity were. Of course he was eager to take Abe in his arms, but he was worried he'd be doing so simply because Abe couldn't make it out of there by his own power. Dread – and excitement – flared through him. He was ready. "Enough. Gentlemen: you do your part and I'll do mine."

Armed with a pistol, two clips, and several centuries' worth of martial experience, Henry followed Porter inside. Just as promised, the place was completely dark. It was also sweltering. "Is that your doing?"

"Yes." Porter explained, pleased, "I took the liberty of disabling the HVAC system. No new air in or out, so it won't be long before things get a bit stuffy for our mortal compatriots." He consulted the schematic on his mobile before pointing down the hall. "This way."

There was a click. Then the red laser-sight of a combat rifle blinked onto Henry's chest.

The guard at the other end of it shouted, "Move and you're dead!"

Porter laughed. "I'm afraid that ship has sailed." He lunged forward, claws out…

Four minutes later, Henry and Porter trotted down a dark staircase, two floors below ground and dropping. The night-vision goggles augmented Henry's already keen vision, so he could make out the rapid movement of Porter's feet—

_SB-5_

—and that Porter's utility belt was in fact a narrow carryall, likely a hundred and fifty years old if the style of leatherwork and brass buckling were any indication.

 _SB-7_ , _SB-8_

A hundred and fifty years, the end of the war—

 _SB-11_ , _SB-12_

—when Henry knew he would do everything in his power to keep his dear friend.

And now Porter stood with his hand on the door: SB-13. "Ready?"

"At your signal, Benjamin."

Porter raised his gun and stepped out. The corridor was nondescript, with sleek steel doors lining both sides until it reached a security kiosk where another two armed guards were posed to kill.

"…I repeat, targets spotted. Armed and presumed dangerous. Permission to take offensive action," one was droning over his communications link.

The second one called, "Stand down!"

Without hesitation, Porter fired once, twice. The first guard fell to his knees. But the second guard had time to aim and fire before Porter fell on him.

Henry was behind him. "Are you all right?"

Porter pushed two fingers to the spot on his abdomen where he'd been hit. He was covered in blood, though it was hard to tell how much was his: he'd made quite a mess of the guard's head. "Stings a bit," he admitted, getting to his feet.

Beyond the security door was the laboratory. Dozens of computer monitors, crash carts stacked high with electronic equipment, microscopes and scanners and myriad surgical instruments, all of it dead in the near-perfect darkness—and at the center, a long, raised bench. Henry walked to it, ran his hand over a steel manacle, and then stopped.

The bench's foot tapered into a drain and trough, like an embalmer's table. A wide-necked orb was connected to the other end, looming over the head-brace on an adjustable metal neck.

Porter came up beside him. "What in God's name…"

"It's a lamp," Henry said, remembering Peter's too-keen description of Praxis' Class B Abnormal Specimen: _it cowers in the presence of UV light._

 _Oh, Abe_ , he thought, as a sickened twinge settled in his stomach. And then, between clenched teeth: "After we find him, I want this place burned to the ground."


	9. Chapter 9

_Now_

"Time is short, gentlemen," Smythe's voice piped through their comm system, "and none of it can be spared on theatrics."

Before Henry could bite back, Porter sighed, "To think, Nathaniel, all these many years I've known you to be a friend of the stage." And to Henry: "But ah, but I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives." He gestured to a pair of bay doors set at the rear of the lab. Then he pulled three metal spheres from his belt, gave each a twist, and tossed them one by one to the floor. "These'll go off in ten minutes—quite a lot of bang for their size. More's the pity we won't be around to watch."

Henry was with him on that. His vindictive streak demanded satisfaction. But there were more pressing matters at hand, so he had no choice but to be content _knowing_ the place would be destroyed. Without a backward glance, he followed Porter out of the lab and down another hallway.

The door at the end of it was unattended.

But it was locked.

"Stand back," Porter said after he'd affixed a slim box to the steel. It was a similar device to the one he used to access the generator, and once activated, it packed a similar punch: in an instant, the door was thrown back, revealing a narrow cell. Unfurnished. Unadorned. Dark.

A man sat in the corner, legs hugged up to his chest, face tucked against his knees. His thin frame was draped in cotton, a shapeless t-shirt, trousers which fell well above his ankles. He was perfectly still.

Still, as the smoke cleared.

Still, as Henry ran to him and fell to his knees at his side.

As Henry said, "Abraham. Oh, Abe," and set a hand on his shoulder.

Abe jolted, as if startled awake. "Henry?"

"Yes. Yes, my dear. I'm here. We've come for you." Henry wanted nothing more than to take Abe in his arms and feel that familiar weight against his body, and couldn't stop himself from peeling back his mask enough to press his lips against Abe's brow. He could make out a series of welts that ran up Abe's forearms and under his clothes, only to reappear on his neck. His hair was shorn. There too, along his scalp, his flesh was scarred. By God, what had they done to him?

"Henry," Abe was saying, his voice tremulous and rough with disuse. "I can't see."

"Yes. That's our doing. Benjamin Porter is here with me."

As if on cue, Porter peeked round the doorframe. "All clear," he said. "But likely not for long. Hello, Mr. Lincoln."

"Porter," Abe murmured, almost to himself, "Smythe, and Morse… The Unholy Trinity."

"Yes. Just like old times, eh? Now tell me: can you stand?" Henry was relieved when Abe nodded, one hand gripping in Henry's as he rose to his feet. But he fell into Henry's arms a few seconds later; he was too weak to get far on his own. "Hold on. I'm going to brace you."

Henry grappled for a better hold—and then winced. Abe had always been lean, even when he was at the height of his prowess as a hunter, and yet Henry could make out ribs and nobs of spine as he wrapped an arm around Abe's back. His captors had kept him in a state of near-starvation. But, Henry hardly had to remind himself, _alive_. They took a few steps together before Henry confirmed, "All right?"

"Yes. Thank you, Henry."

"Don't thank me just yet. We're not out of the woods." If need be, Henry was prepared to carry him – though it would complicate getting back upstairs. It was enough of a challenge to proceed beyond a halting gait, and on more than one occasion Porter swung back from the lead to exasperatedly demand that they hurry up.

Smythe, listening in, echoed the sentiment. "Boom-time in five minutes. I'm holding the central control room, but a SWAT team is undoubtedly en route… with a fleet of California's finest in tow."

"Much obliged for the update, Nathaniel," Henry drawled. And then, to Abe: "Did I mention we don't have long?"

They didn't encounter additional guards in the stairwell – or any who weren't already incapacitated by the sweltering air, or dead – though Porter kept his gun handy. Henry shouldered the brunt of Abe's weight; braced his too-thin frame. Held on.

Abe said, "I'm glad you're here, Henry," in a soft, serious voice. "But I'm also glad you called in the cavalry."

Henry's mouth stretched into a smile. The warm feeling that rose up with it was odd, almost jarring, after everything that had happened. But welcome. "James Bond enthusiast that I am, I fear I could not have managed it alone."

They made it to the Land Rover as the first set of explosions rocked through the building. Henry helped Abe inside and then slid onto the seat beside him while Porter joined Smythe in front.

Smythe peered into the rearview mirror. He was still wearing his mask – they all were, and by his own word they would continue to do so until the lab was miles behind them. He said, "Welcome aboard, Mr. President."

Then he slammed his foot down on the accelerator. A bank of strobes glowed in the distance, but before the first car crested the horizon the Rover had cleared the parking lot and was barreling down the highway. Behind them, Praxis Industries was burning.

They'd made it out.

To hell with it. Henry ripped his mask and gloves off and turned to Abe. For all his length, Abe looked insubstantial, folded in on himself. He was half-turned towards the window, his head bowed and his eyes screwed shut. He was very pale.

Henry reached to him cautiously. "Abe?" He touched Abe's forearm, then trailed up to his shoulder. "Abe. It's all right. We have you."

Abe didn't reply. But he did open his eyes: milky, blue-white, and wet. Blind. The pupils were reduced to thick scar tissue, and the tender flesh about the lids was swollen and scabbed.

_Oh._ The lamp. Henry sucked in a breath and all but lunged sideways to take Abe's face in his hands. How had he not seen it before? The goggles had tinted everything red, yes, and deepened the shadows—

"My God— I promise you, Abraham. I will do everything in my power to see you well again."

"I know." Abe leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Henry's. The kiss was tentative at first. A whetting of senses. Henry steadied himself, tasting Abe's dry, salty lips. Then Abe tilted his head; Henry opened his mouth, felt Abe's tongue against his own, and yes: he would do anything.

After a moment, Henry pulled back. The Rover, he realized with abrupt clarity, was filled with a rich, ruddy scent, distinct from the reek of gore on Porter's jumpsuit.

A moan eked from the seat behind them, and Henry turned to see there wasn't a seat at all: a steel grate ran from floor to ceiling. Behind it three men lay in a pile of limbs and guard's fatigues. Only one of them seemed to be conscious. He was also bleeding profusely from the crown of his head.

The closeness, the reality of that fresh, human blood made Henry shiver. He could only imagine what it did to Abe. "Bloody hell. What were you thinking, bringing them along with us?"

Having by now removed his mask, Smythe caught Henry's eye in the rearview. "Carry-out," he said, simply. "Don't be coy, Henry. I'm half-starved… and I suspect I'm not the only one."

Abe touched Henry's hand. Then he took it in his own, gripping it tightly, palm to palm. Henry could make out the shape of his fangs as he spoke. "His name is Dick Matheson. I know his mind."

"Ah. Splendid. Of course we'll be happy to arrange a private audience," said Porter, leaning back in his seat. "Just you wait."

 

Dawn was breaking as they made it to the safehouse. By all appearances, the Rover had pulled up to a perfectly normal single-level, midcentury home. Well taken care of, but not to the point of fussiness: the two acre-sized lot was due for mowing, and small curls of paint were here and there peeling off the shutters. No different than any of the other handful of homes within eyesight.

Smythe hit a button on the console and the garage door rattled up. When the car was inside, Henry moved to open his door. Smythe stopped him. "Not yet."

The garage wheeled shut, Porter keyed a series of digits into his tablet— and the floor began to descend, down and down with deliberate slowness until they reached the lower vault, sixty feet or more below the ground. Smythe drove forward to where an identical vehicle sat parked.

Morse strode up. "Action News is attributing the explosion to a chemical leak."

"That's one way to put it," Smythe grunted and slid out from his seat, and then stretched, catlike, his arms arced above his head. 

"And—did you…" Morse trailed off as Henry and Abe rounded the Rover's corner. If the semidarkness of Abe's cell had paid him no favors, Henry thought, the vault's incandescent glare left him looking wrecked. "Mr. Lincoln!"

"Hello, William." Abe smiled grimly. "I cannot with honesty… say it's good to see you—for I cannot, as you see. But please. Call me Abe."

"Jesus, Henry. Abe. If there's anything I can do, name it."

Porter was meanwhile dragging the three guards from the trunk and onto the concrete floor. Henry swallowed and stared down at the one Abe had picked out. Matheson. Of course Smythe was right: the damage to Abe's eyes alone might take months to heal, and blood was the only thing for it. A great deal of blood.

"Him," Henry said. "And a modicum of privacy."

"Yes, of course." Morse hoisted the man over his shoulder – all Kevlar clad and shod, he must have weighed close to three hundred pounds, and Morse was dwarfed by his bulk – and led Henry and Abe towards a side door. Henry glanced back. Smythe and Porter stood together, talking softly as Smythe inspected the hole in Porter's jumpsuit and the wound which lay beneath. The bullet had not come out the other side. Henry couldn't make out what Porter said to make Smythe laugh, but something in him stirred as he saw Smythe rally back with a kiss.

There were so few of them left— and whatever had come between them in the past be damned: Henry knew that now he had Abe back, he would never let him go.

"Henry?" Morse stood several yards down the hall. His free hand rested on a doorknob, and he waited for Henry to nod and start guiding Abe forward again before he twisted it open.

The room was in fact a suite with a large bed and vanity, elevated sitting area, and beyond, behind an elegantly carved partition, a bath. Morse bent and dropped his burden to the tiled floor, and the man groaned, blinking up at him. "Vampires," he was saying. "Fuckin' vampires, right out of a fuckin' movie."

"Yes," Morse agreed quietly. And then, to Henry: "There's an intercom on the nightstand should you need anything. We'll be up a while yet reviewing the video footage." Then he was gone. The door clicked shut behind him.

Abe grimaced. His fangs had already dropped, and the skin of his face and arms, scarred as it was, was marked with a raised web of veins. Grotesque. Horrible. Beloved. "Henry…"

Henry eased him a few steps forward until they were but an arm's length from Matheson's prone body. "I—I can leave. If you want. If you want to be alone."

"No. Please stay." Abe dropped to his knees, reaching forward to stroke his palms up Matheson's trunk and back down his arms. His chest. And Matheson didn't struggle, or a least not below his neck. Smythe had broken his spine. He was breathing heavily, with effort, and Abe was upon him, clawing back his collar to expose his throat and nuzzling down to rip open the jugular.

It only took a minute or two. Abe drank with a ferocity that Henry scarcely recognized—or only recognized in himself; in their kind. Abe was covered in blood and gore. Soaked through to the skin until he almost glowed with it, a mad thing, violent and fierce.

And when Matheson was quite dead, Abe turned to Henry, his eyes wide. "Henry?"

Henry went to him. He took Abe in his arms and held him to his chest. "It's all right, my Abraham. It will be all right."

 

Wakefulness came to Henry in gradual waves. He was aware of the ticking of a clock. A fan blowing overhead. A hand on his face, and cool fingers drawing his hair back from his cheek. He opened his eyes to see Abe facing him, his gaze cast downward and a small smile curling his mouth. 

Abe said, "I hope I didn't disturb you."

"I don't mind." Henry caught Abe's hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. A fortnight had passed since that night at Praxis Industries, and the graft scars on Abe's arms, the welts that had connected him to IV lines, the pockmarks of needle insertions—the myriad tiny injuries inflicted upon him in the five years he'd been held were all but faded away. And the larger injuries… The remnants of more invasive procedures, bone marrow extractions and spinal fluid taps; the incision marks on his temples and at the base of his skull; the tender, burned away ocular nerves—these were healing. But slowly. And so: "How do you feel?"

"I'm not sure," Abe admitted. "This morning… the fifth victim in as many days. I have never taken so much blood, Henry. Not even in the beginning."

It was true. And yet by the very fact that Abe could continue feeding— Well. His body clamored for _more_. Save for the first, who was as good as dead from the start, Abe let them live while Henry made Smythe promise they would stay that way. Henry reasoned, "You have been under enormous amounts of stress. You drank refrigerated pig's blood in such limited quantities as to fool your cells into near-dormancy. It's a wonder you didn't get to that damned scientist before I did."

Abe's smile turned rueful. "You took him home with you."

"I didn't know who he was. And if I had? Perhaps I would have killed him in an alley and saved William the trouble of cleaning my Turkish carpet." Henry reached forward, rubbing his fingers through Abe's coarse, short hair. Abe hummed in approval. "You still haven't told me," he said after a while. "How it happened."

"I know." Abe went still. But he didn't pull back.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. To anyone who's following along: thanks for your patience. I intended to post this chapter weeks ago but then lost the thumb drive holding the first draft. Writing is progressing at a good pace again now - I'll do my best to sail this ship into port soon. And then: the sequel?!

_Then_

_New York City, 1913_

Henry owned more than two dozen bespoke greatcoats; seventy-five frocks and jackets; and nearly three hundred waistcoats done up in silk and brocade and fine Scottish wool. He had suits in gabardine and twill, linen and seersucker. He had gloves of fawn, kid, and cowhide. And tucked in a chestnut case, he had sixty pairs of tinted spectacles and dark glasses, the frames ranging from absurdly large to simple and discreet, with lenses in rose and amber and deepest smoke.

But that night, nothing but utmost finery would do. The tuxedo Henry pulled from his closet was perhaps the best-fitting garment he had ever owned. He'd commissioned it in Savile Row the year before, and each time he put it on he couldn't help but liken himself to a knight of old preparing for battle. It brought on a sense of anticipation. His hands even shook a little as he did up the collar, starched and scarcely paler than the flesh of his throat.

He was hungry.

He was also running late. After a second glance in the mirror to make sure he hadn't missed a button, that every plane of fabric was well-aligned, he shrugged into an overcoat—though it was for appearance's sake only… even on such a frigid night.

To that end, the sidewalk outside his building and each one that met it were all but free of pedestrians. He ran ten blocks in less than a minute: south and then east, down to a familiar row of red brick behemoths where yes, waiting beneath a gas lamp, was the mortal to whom he'd pledged his time.

"Good evening, Alec," Henry said, taking no small pleasure in the way Alec started, spinning on this heel and coughing up a puff of cigarette smoke. Or the way Alec's complexion reddened all the way to his flaxen hairline a moment later. Six months of companionship – and intimacy – hadn't dimmed Henry's liking of the lad's shyness.

But then again, perhaps it was only the cold. Alec's reply came out smoothly enough: "Hello, Henry. I was half-expecting you'd stood me up."

"What, and miss the gallery opening of the year?"

"The decade, if you believe the _Times_." Alec retrieved a silver case from his pocket.

"I don't," Henry drawled, but then smiled and slipped a cigarette free. Getting it lit, he took a thoughtful drag. Yes. Decade _was_ more like it. The gallery in question was in fact Manhattan's 69th Street Armory; the opening was the International Exhibition of Modern Art. And the _Times_ wasn't alone in spending the last six months atremble: every collector's trade paper Henry subscribed to, which was to say every printing worth its pulp, claimed that the Exhibition would be the finest selection of artwork yet assembled on American soil. The very idea of it thrilled him to his core. And so: "Oh, I expect it will be worth a look."

"A look? A _look_? For what I'm paying you, I demand no less than three hours' worth of your advisory abilities," laughed Alec.

And it was in jest, certainly it was. Henry gleaned the humor from Alec's thoughts like dew off grass. He sensed the admiration and attraction and knew it for truth.

He smelled Alec's aftershave and the tobacco on his breath. And he heard his heartbeat.

Alec reached for Henry's arm, but then stopped. "Henry? Oh, Jesus. You must be half-starved. It's been so long since we— Let's go upstairs—"

"No." Henry shook his head, shivering despite himself— and suddenly appalled at the breadth of his own gall. What in Hell's name was he doing, carrying on in such a way? This was, after all, his idea.

He stomped out his half-ashed cigarette and met Alec's eye. "I'll be all right."

Alec was good-natured and _foolish_ enough to simply nod and light himself another before they tucked deeper into their coats and made their way south. And when he'd made sure no one was looking, Henry pressed a quick kiss to Alec's cheek.

 

The Exhibition was indeed magnificent.

By all accounts, the Armory proved an odd setting for such an event. Gridded walls served as temporary wings, and the high, domed ceiling amplified and echoed every utterance of the opening night crowd.

Henry at least knew how to be heard, saying, "This way," as he steered Alec from the coat check.

"But Henry," Alec complained, "the Matisse is over there. Don't you want to see what all the fuss is about?"

Henry nodded but walked on. It was easy enough to suss out which galleries were less crowded – here there were fifty pulses, there only ten, because of course they were there to see _art_ and not the backsides of people's heads – which brought them to the rear of the hall and a fine assortment of avant-garde works.

They stopped in front of a large, brightly colored painting, the abstract brush-strokes all curve and curl, abloom. It was movement and form—and fascinatingly, nothing of the sort.

"'Garden of Love,'" Alec said as he inspected the title card. "What do you make of it? Whets the senses, eh?"

Henry blinked and drew away from the painting. "It's… quite unlike anything I've seen before. It defies expectations… demands more than simple perception."

"A good sales pitch, but would you actually buy such a piece?"

"I might consider it."

"You mean you'd consider it if the price was right."

Henry shrugged and gestured to the opposite wall. "The world is full of contradictions. Now, shall we see what else the Europeans have brought forth to delight our senses?"

"Lead on, Macduff."

 

An hour or more passed before they made it back to the frontmost galleries, more than a few glasses of champagne between them, and it was only then that Henry took notice of the tall, slender man beside them.

The man caught Henry's eye. The surprise in his face, wonderment perhaps, didn't diminish as his mouth stretched into a care-worn curve.

Henry stopped in his tracks. The glass slipped from his hand – he had gone mad, finally, at last – and shattered in a wide arc at his feet.

"Henry!" Alec hissed. "Are you quite all right?"

"I'm sorry," Henry murmured. He didn't dare look away from the man. "Could you, er—find a curator? Or an attendant?"

Alec huffed out a laugh, "Yes, of course," and lower: "but you'll owe me," and strode off without much more than a backward glance.

There was a tremor in Henry's guts, and quite suddenly the heady press of light and sound and heat all about him was gone. The weight of the past half-century was cast off.

"Henry," said Abraham Lincoln; Henry's own Abe; for it was he, "you cut your hair."

A beat. Another. The scant crowd that had a moment before been buzzing round a Cassatt portrait spread out and dissipated, and then they were alone. Henry thought: _I thought you'd gone._

But he said, "Hello, Abe." He smoothed his dry palms down his thighs, a gesture born of reflex and little else. "It's—it's remarkable. Hell. I can't—" He laughed. "What are you doing here, of all places?"

_Where in God's name have you been?_

Because after the two, three months Henry had spent in New York City at the behest of the Union in 1865, he returned to the cabin. And Abraham—

Abe's smile narrowed. It was only then that Henry took in the whole of him, handsome wool tuxedo and starched collar and silk tie – too-pale brow and cheek and throat – and all. He looked well. A little tired, drawn—but yes: well and truly wonderful.

"Oh, only for this."

Henry followed Abe's tilted head to a smallish painting mounted two-deep from the corner, an image of a young woman seated beside a window with a book open in her lap. The pallet was simple enough, greys and browns for the window and sill, green for the dress. And the eyes: blue. Familiar, full of intelligence and humor and not a little sadness.

The title card read: _Nancy_.

"She's remarkable," Henry said, meaning it. It would have been easy to lose himself in the whorls of pigment. Every feverish detail. And this: fifty years. He almost whispered, "I hope you'll believe me when I say I have missed you, Abraham. And I know I was a fool to have left you."

Abe's gaze was level. "Yes."

"Would you… God, Abe. Look at you. Would you believe I've imagined this moment more times than I care to admit, and now I'm about to make a mess of things. Again." Henry pursed his lips. And then—

"Henry, I found a gallery attendant," said Alec, trundling into the room in voice and then in form. "He already had the dustpan in hand! Apparently you aren't the only one who created some art of his own tonight. Henry?"

Henry swallowed. "Thank you. Alec, I'd like you to meet—Er."

"John Aesop," Abe supplied, and Henry couldn't help but smile. He recalled Abe's admiration of the fabulist well enough. For a while they stood together, Alec feigning interest in the portrait even as he thrilled at having its creator's attention, and Henry failing to keep his eyes off his old friend, lover... Oh, Hell. His _progeny_.

Then the lights dimmed once, twice. "Damn it. Closing time," Alec said, and confirmed the hour on his pocket watch, "but we've hardly seen anything! Henry, promise me we'll return."

Abe looked at Alec, intrigued if not taken aback by the lad's impertinence; but he let it go at a raised eyebrow. Then his gaze traced back to Henry. Reluctant. "Well. Enjoy your evening. I enjoyed making your acquaintance, Alec." A beat, and then: "Henry."

"Wait." Henry was reeling. He simply couldn't let Abe go, not again—appearances be damned. It was all he could do to wrangle a calling card from his wallet and pencil his address on the back of it, along with: _Please, Abe: tonight._

He held it forth. "I have a keen interest in American works, Mr. Aesop."

Abe took the card. Then he shook Henry's hand and was gone into the crowd.

 

"I can't imagine it would be a sound investment. The subject matter was downright dowdy," Alec was saying as he stepped up into the cab. "Oh, his colors were delightful enough…" 

Henry slid in beside him. With two thumps of his walking stick against the ceiling they began rolling north, back in the direction of Alec's flat. He was in no mood to talk to Alec about John Aesop – _Abe_ – though damn him if his mind wasn't filled with little else.

"…But consider what the Europeans are doing. Like you said: those pieces defy expectations. _That's_ the future of art."

Henry was only half-listening, but he managed, "There will always be those with more traditional tastes."

Alec shot Henry a glare. And then: "You know him, don't you?"

Ah. Of course Alec had noticed. Henry sighed, "What? Know who?"

"Look: you needn't deny it. I saw the way you looked at him. It's the first time I've ever seen you tongue-tied." Alec drew in a breath. "I don't know what he is to you, but I hope you realize how much our… friendship means to me. You're the one thing I've found in my whole fucking life that's actually meant something."

"Be that as it may, you still have much living to do."

"Damn it, Henry, I'm not some boy you can—"

Henry leaned forward and cut off him with a kiss. "I know," he said. He braced himself with one hand on the cab's side panel and the other on Alec's thigh. Alec got a hand round Henry's head, his fingers capturing the hair at Henry's nape.

" _Please_." Alec pulled his collar back and craned his neck. His throat was flushed, but Henry could make out the pair of nearly-healed puncture wounds, evidence of their last encounter some two weeks before. Tonight he would insist on discretion: his blood would seal Alec's flesh handily enough, to Hell with any arguments.

But first— _he needed—_

Even now, overstimulated as he was, Henry had the good grace to feel a pang of regret. Alec was younger than Henry had been when he died. That he should willingly make himself available to Henry's needs; that Henry should ever appeal to Alec's vanity—Well.

Henry had examined Alec's soul. Recognized that he would never give Alec what he truly longed for. But it didn't bear thinking about. He contented himself to return the lad's affection, and it was a simple thing to spend several hours away from the solitude of his home; to be _seen_ if not known.

To be fed.

 _Abe_ , he thought, _what would you say if you saw me now?_

Then again—Regret? Surely Abe understood what loneliness could do to a man.

Surely, as Abe would come to him later.

Henry bit into Alec's throat and it was hardly the most despicable thing he'd ever done. Alec, after all, was a fool. But Henry liked him. And he was interesting enough to make it out alive.

 

Three hours later, Henry sat in his library.

He'd nearly drunk his way to the bottom of his best bottle of whiskey and was feeling only a little lightheaded for his trouble. Not nearly enough to take the edge off the despair that had crept up from his guts the moment he turned the key in his front door. The click-clank mechanism of the lock gave way to utter silence—

And he was alone. He'd left Alec at his flat, shrugging off pleas to stay the night.

More, he allowed Abe to walk away from him without so much as a backward glance. After fifty years! All because Henry failed to summon enough spine to demand his attention—and display just how much he'd longed for Abe in their time apart. Oh, how he had.

He was tempted to collapse right there in the cold entryway and wallow in his own failure. But his liquor cabinet was upstairs; he changed into a pair of simple wool trousers and a wide-sleeved linen shirt the likes of which had not been fashionable for decades, and then he doled out two fat fingers of liquor.

Then he began to fidget.

For an hour, he busied himself with arranging and rearranging his belongings. He generally took pride in neatness, but there were many stacks of books about the place, each one the accumulated evidence of a passing fancy. Organizing them came as a welcome distraction. He even hauled some back to the library… and when he'd finished, he lit a fire, set a record spinning on the phonograph, and sank into his favorite wingchair.

Two fingers of whiskey became two more.

By the next two, Henry was holding his face in his hands, his frame slumped and folded in on itself. The last measures of Haydn's minuetto fell into the _snap-hiss_ , _snap-hiss_ of the needle failing to find purchase in a vinyl groove.

And then there was a knock on the front door.

Henry was out of his seat and bounding down the stairs before the heavy brass ring was out of Abe's hand—because yes, even the unthinking universe would allow it to be no one else. It was only when he was less than a dozen steps away that he slowed.

He smoothed his shirtfront and pushed a short curl of hair back from his brow before twisting the knob. "Hello," he said.

"Henry," Abe returned, an echo of the farewell he'd bid at the gallery. But there was a fondness behind it. Warmth that spread to his eyes, though he at once seemed an apparitional thing, slight in his snow-dusted greatcoat and the tuxedo which peeked out from beneath. Hell, he wasn't even wearing a hat, and unmelted snowflakes dusted his hair like ash from a spent fire.

And yet: "Oh, Abe. Please come in."

"Thank you." Abe allowed Henry to take his coat. Then he sniffed the air. "Ah. So he isn't here."

"Alec? No—I would never."

"Never, Henry? Never allow a mortal into your lair and clothe him, shelter him?"

The questions rumbled out of Abe, and it took Henry a moment to decipher his meaning. But Abe was smiling now and Henry couldn't help but follow suit. He said, "He would not make much of a hunter. I don't think he's ever _held_ a firearm, let alone a blade of any kind."

"Then he has no bad habits to unlearn."

"Yes. Well—" Henry clenched and unclenched his fists. He wanted so much of this moment. He longed to take Abe in his arms, but was suddenly unsure if Abe would allow it. "I'm afraid I've retired from that business."

If this admission vexed Abe, he didn't show it. They'd reached the end of the hallway and he was staring into the parlor. "Do you sell art, then, or merely accumulate it?"

"There are many pieces I find difficult to part with once I've found a place for them," Henry admitted. "And you, an artist of repute. It's a wonder we haven't crossed paths before."

"I avoid this city."

"Did you know I was here?" And perhaps this came out too quickly. Abe looked up. "Ah. Are you staying for long?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well," Henry gestured up the staircase, "for the moment, allow me to give you the grand tour. I never have visitors, you know, but I've enjoyed outfitting the place with every conceivable convenience these last five years." He toggled a switch on the landing and in seconds the darkness fell to warm electric light.

This at least brought a smile back to Abe's face, and indeed, the wonderment was still as good as new to Henry too. "My compliments to Mr. Edison."

 

Henry had long considered his library to be the crown jewel of his home, and his current spread of over three thousand volumes was no exception. The shelves held many rare and valuable works, his careworn Chaucer, a horde of well-loved Shakespeare, and— "Some new things," he said, and stroked a hand down a green and gold-leaf spine: _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ , "since you last— That is to say: there is always delight in discovering something entirely original."

"And what of the old?" Abe gave Henry a canny glance.

"Well. If I've read _Macbeth_ fifty times," Henry said slowly, "I have read it a thousand and prized it no less."

"You do well for yourself, Henry."

"And do you? Here we are, tonight, after so long apart. Would you tell me what _became_ of you?"

"Would you care?"

"Abe, for God's sake—"

"Be content to know that I endure!" Abe quaked. Then he shuddered and rubbed his hands on his face. "Forgive me, Henry. It has been a long day. The gallery reception—I must be more tired than I thought."

"No. It's my fault. Please: let me get you a drink. I've several rather nice whiskeys I think you'll…" Henry trailed off. Abe had dropped his hands and half-turned away; even in the warm lamplight, he was wan. "Hold on."

With that, he was out of the library and into his sitting room. The bar there was small but carefully-provisioned: three bottles of whiskey, another of cognac. And the fifth one unlabeled but unmistakable. Blood-wine. He poured a glass of it for Abe, and after a beat, another for himself. His veins still ran warm with Alec's blood, but the extra infusion in the wine might help to tame his racing thoughts.

When he returned, he found Abe standing by the fire with a slim volume in his hands. It didn't take more than a cursory glance to identify it as one of the diaries. Abe had left them all behind at their cabin, and Henry spent many long hours in the years since reading and rereading them, committing the careful hand to heart—for the events had long since become memory.

Abe's eyelids drooped shut as he took a swallow of wine, and it was a moment before he said, "You know, it reads like fiction. It cannot be a life I once led. I was never so brave."

"No," Henry said with certainty, "you were braver. Stronger, and backed by a purpose such as I've not seen before or since."

"Purpose? Don't speak to me of purpose, Henry. I look into the souls of men every day and see nothing if not sorrow and joy and want and need—but all of it is random." Abe tossed the diary onto the mantle. "You used me as a means to an end. And when you turned me, I merely exchanged one sort of bloodlust for another. One hunger for the next. It's a wonder I haven't staked myself on principle."

"Abe, please—" Henry tried to cut in, but Abe shook his head.

"What? Aren't you satisfied with your creation? You, who dragged me from death, have the gall to ask what _became_ of me. 'Vampires rarely socialize, and almost never with their own kind. Any alliances are born of desperation.' Your words, Henry. Not mine."

This raised Henry's hackles. "Recited to a sixteen year-old boy with four broken ribs and a set of claw wounds round his throat. A simplification."

"Really? You fed me your blood, you bedded me, and then you expected me to stand by while you played philosopher's club with your Union. The war had already all but eradicated vampires from this land. An outcome, need I remind you, for which I sacrificed _everything_. For heaven's sake, Henry. What more would you have had me do? What did you want?"

"To ensure your protection."

"You doubted me?"

"I loved you," Henry blurted out. All at once there was a prickle at the nape of his neck, a tingle, like insects walking; a lurching in his guts. "And I love you still. Anything I may have done was with your best interest in mind, but you are right—that fact doesn't absolve me. It was vanity, too, that drove me back to the Union. I realized that the moment I found you gone from the cabin. You didn't even leave a note, Abe. Do you know what that did to me?

"But then I knew I was wrong to have left you alone when you were still so new.

"When _we_ were new." He reached forward and touched Abe's cheek. "Would you allow me the chance to start over?"

Abe was silent for several moments before meeting Henry's eye. "I barely tolerate myself, Henry. I can't stay with you."

"Not even for one night?" And even as Henry said this, he wanted more. "If you're right, and our lives are ruled by chance, consider what a boon we've been dealt to have come upon each other."

Abe huffed out a little laugh. Then he leaned in and kissed Henry with, if Henry was to be perfectly honest, a bit more tooth than he was used to, but it didn't matter. Abe smelled of cold night air and tasted like blood and Bordeaux, and for all his vitriol, his hands were stroking Henry's hair just the way Henry liked. Abe could be nothing if not himself.

Henry was halfway done unknotting Abe's bowtie when he leaned in to whisper, "I want you to fuck me," and he immediately felt a shiver rise up from the base of Abe's spine.

After that, there was a mad scramble to see who could disrobe whom first. Abe's tie and suspenders hit the library floor; Henry's shirt was tossed over a banister in the hallway; and all the rest of it lay strewn about the master suite.

Henry dropped back onto the bed and Abe followed after, kissing him and running his hands over Henry's chest. It was all Henry could do to reach for the bedside table where he'd stashed a small vial of oil. No, not the top drawer-- _There_.

Abe looked down at it. He was smiling, and his hair was deliciously mussed, almost boyish. "I've missed you, Henry."

Oh. The sentiment rocked Henry to his core. But he was also hard, half-mad with want. He said – almost panted, though not from lack of breath: "Well. Then you'd best do something about it."

After one last lingering kiss, Abe made his way down Henry's throat. He dragged his teeth against Henry's shoulder, then shifted his attention to Henry's cock. The sudden feel of Abe's cool, wet mouth on his flesh had him fisting the sheets and hissing, "God, _yes_."

For the next several minutes, Abe worked Henry into near-delirious pleasure— to the point where Henry was only vaguely aware that Abe had taken some of the oil to slick his fingers. But then Abe's hand sank. He rubbed at Henry's hole, spreading the oil a bit before pushing inside. The sting of it was sharp but hardly unfamiliar. Henry sucked in a breath and did his best to keep himself together, and yet with Abe's mouth still on him, his fingers gently coaxing—

Christ, _bending_ in perfect cadence—

Well, that was certainly new. Some untamed portion of his brain prickled with jealousy; the thought of Abe learning such things from another lover troubled him, but oh, he couldn't dwell on it then. The sweet warmth of his arousal was bounding up from his middle, and he said, "Any more of that… and I'm done for."

Abe pulled back. His face was bright with humor. "What was that?"

"Don't tease." Henry watched as Abe poured more of the oil into his palm and spread it up and down his shaft. Then Abe was upon him again, a hand on either one of Henry's raised thighs as he drove himself into Henry's body with one smooth thrust.

Henry swiftly got a hand round Abe's neck and drew him in for kiss. "Abe," he said. "Abe, by God, I've missed you too."

"Then you'd best—Oh, _Henry_ ," Abe groaned. His eyes were screwed shut, and he bowed his head, edging his hips back until his cock was almost out of Henry before pushing back in. Then again; again. "You—You're almost warm."

He pressed his lips to Henry's chest, just above his heart.

He laved up Henry's collarbone.

And he said against tender flesh of Henry's throat, "Henry, please…" so that each word hit him in a neat, cold puff of breath.

Henry braced his hands on Abe's back, locking him in place. "Yes," he hissed and craned his neck in offering. "Do it, damn you."

The pressure of Abe's fangs; the pain that spun out from the two puncture wounds, only to be replaced by heady pleasure as Abe lapped at Henry's blood—the deep but rapidly deteriorating rhythm of Abe's hips, the girth of him—Well. Henry didn't stand a chance. His climax rushed through him and it was all he could do to keep from crying out.

Then as he came back to himself: "I would do anything for this. To have you." Henry moved his hands back to Abe's head, his fingers lacing in Abe's hair until Abe met his gaze with wide, blasted black eyes. Henry thought Abe must be close.

And he was—After another few thrusts he pulsed and stilled and all but collapsed onto Henry's chest, grounding out, " _Henry_." When he leaned forward for another kiss, Henry tasted himself on Abe's lips.

 

Later, much later, Henry said, "Tell me about John Aesop."

Abe sniffed, his breath ruffling the hair at Henry's nape. "There isn't much to tell."

"Well, where does he live?"

"Philadelphia."

"Go on."

"He lives in a red brick row home in Society Hill that's even older than he is. The evening light streams into the parlor and turns everything to gold. The floors creak. But mostly it's quiet.

"He likes to sleep past noon. His neighbors, or those who pay him any mind, think him eccentric if harmless. Sometimes he rides the train into the countryside and finds a place to wander. Sit with a book. Sketch.

"Paint well into the night.

"And go to a tavern. Order a neat whiskey and watch the men coming and going. Pick one out—Struggle to find the nerve to _take_ him even as every fiber of me cries out with want. The hunger never really goes away. It's a tuning fork that, once struck, hums forever. God, Henry. All those years I hunted. The time I knew you: I never knew _that_." A pause, and then: "How long have you and Alec…"

"Less than six months. And only intermittently," Henry said. "He travels a lot."

"He enjoys your attention."

"Who am I to complain of deviancy? We met at a party; he'd recently returned from abroad, and he knew what I was on sight. There was a vampire he knew in London who—Well. No matter. I think it's not as uncommon an arrangement as all that."

"It seems dangerous. What if he attempted to blackmail you?"

"There's always risk in what we do, but so too there are advantages to knowing where your next meal will come from. You know, I have it on good authority that your old acquaintance Edgar Poe offered himself in a similar fashion to Simon Reynolds."

Abe hummed before replying glumly, "Poe did not have the constitution for it."

"Yes. A vampire at his throat was perhaps the least of his troubles," said Henry. "And as for Alec—"

"He thinks you'll turn him."

"He's mistaken. I don't mean to be flippant. I'm aware of his conceits, but I can only strive to do right by him and trust he'll exhibit discretion in return." And then: "Besides, I'm fond of him."

"Yet you would leave him, abandon this life if it meant you'd be with me?"

"Yes," said Henry. "Yes."

He shifted so that the whole cool pane of Abe's chest was pressed against his back. Then he closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the ticking of the clock on his bureau; the fire cooling to cinder in the library; the city awakening in the blue dawn outside, hoof clops and clanking wagons; voices: vendors, businessmen; the occasional belch and bustle of motor cars. Wondrous.

 _It_ can _be like this always,_ he thought, _if only you'd allow it._

But he said: "Just promise me you'll keep in touch."

Abe pressed his lips to Henry's shoulder. "I'll do my best."


	11. Chapter 11

_Now_

Abe and Henry were free to come and go about the safehouse compound as they would—though this didn't stop them from spending most of their time in their own quarters.

For their part, Smythe and the others gave Henry and Abe a wide berth. There was much to do following their assault on Praxis Industries: while the media was content to blame the deadly explosion on faulty wiring and ignitable gas, Morse used what Henry could only assume were MI6-calibre computing skills to discover the lengths Praxis went to cover up the disappearances of both their most valued researcher and his favorite specimen.

And while Praxis didn't _seem_ to have linked said disappearances to Henry, Morse was adamant that Henry and Abe remain at the safehouse until it was a certainty.

 

Another two weeks passed before Abe fully regained his vision.

Abe, Henry was happy to learn, still tolerated being read to. Porter set out a stack of paperbacks the night following their arrival, and after initially baulking – why indeed would the proprietors of an antiquarian bookstore have naught but potboilers on hand? – Henry settled on an especially well-thumbed copy of _A Game of Thrones_. It was at least _lengthy_ enough to pass the time.

But Henry found that he quite enjoyed it—And Abe… Well. Abe loved it.

It was no time at all before Henry found himself scouting for _A Feast for Crows_. He left Abe dozing in their bed, content to grab the book and return, only to find Morse and Porter holed up in the rec room.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, they tapped furiously at one of the room's arcade consoles, a smoldering ashtray perched between them. They were back to arguing over the Praxis security tapes. The suits they'd worn while raiding the lab had been laced with wires, a fact which caused Henry no shortage of discomfort that night. But he learned that Morse's tailoring had a purpose: when activated, the wiring worked as a spectrum jammer, rendering them invisible to the security cameras and ensuring their anonymity.

Porter must have known then that a leather satchel belted on the outside of his suit would make the whole thing as good as useless. And yet he was saying, "I've told you, Will. I need it. And I never work without it."

"One of these days your superstition is going to get us all killed," Morse shot back.

"Killed? _Killed?_ " Porter laughed. "Coming from one dead guy to another, that's rich." And then: "But of course there are fates worse than death. Eh, Henry?"

Morse spun round on his heel. "Henry. I didn't hear you come in. Do you need anything?"

"No. I didn't mean to disturb you," said Henry, padding towards the bookshelf. King, Asimov. Ah, there it was.

"You'll be pleased to know we've finished with your car," Morse continued. "She's a stunner, Henry. I can see why you didn't want to give her up."

"One owner from new," Henry said. And this was not exactly true: Alec had held the original papers—but that was decades ago; the wounds that came with Alec's passing had long since hardened into scars. And again, he had no wish to think about Alec then.

"And she contains not a follicle of Peter fucking Pryor," Porter chimed in. He was meanwhile continuing to punch his joystick back and forth until the machine let out a tinny scream. "Three for three. You're getting slow, old man."

"Damn it, Benji. That doesn't count…"

The book tucked neatly under his arm, Henry retreated down the hallway to their suite. "I have it, Abe." Henry looked from the bed to the sitting area, but Abe was nowhere to be seen. "Abe?"

"In here, Henry," Abe's voice piped from behind the bathroom door.

"Ah. Everything all right?"

There was a pause. Henry could hear water splashing in the sink. And then Abe stepped out, naked to the waist, rubbing a towel over his face. "Yes," he said, and for the first time in so many years, he looked Henry in the eye. "Everything's where I remember it."

_Abe_ —Abe's smile reached his too-sensitive, infinitely expressive vampire eyes. Henry went to him, ran careful hands over Abe's brow and cheeks, and pulled him into an embrace. Abe let out a puff of breath. "I'm glad," he said, "to see you too, Henry. But don't think you're off the hook for _Crows_."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Henry said, pressing his lips to Abe's throat and breathing deep of his clean, cool skin.

 

In the days that followed, Henry was as good as his word. And more. Abe was still unable to bear the brunt of the sun, and so they eventually found themselves pilfering deeper into Porter's collection of paperbacks. Dragons gave way to tales of international espionage and government operatives… and then yes, other dragons.

But the nights were completely theirs.

They trained a little: simple things at first, exercises which kept them within the property's confines but gave them a chance to taste the air and relish the wash of blue moonlight.

They enjoyed each other's bodies, hesitantly at first, and then passionate with the renewed confidence they'd built over a century's worth of not-quite-chance encounters and hotel room dalliances—the handful of times they'd met and fought and fucked over the years which to Henry were impossible to resist but ever a thing to despair because they inevitably ended in parting. _This_ , he told himself now, curled against Abe's side: _This time will be different because we are different._

And they talked. They navigated the deep waters of past, present, future: Henry was sensitive to Abe's moods, but with gentle coaxing he agreed to stay with Henry after they left the safehouse. "Just to regain my bearings."

It was nearly dawn. They sat in wooden chairs beneath the small pergola, a half-empty bottle of whiskey resting between them. The warming air rustled the wisteria vines which drooped from the surrounding latticework.

_What went on at Praxis?_

_What horrors did you endure at Peter Pryor's hand?_

Henry gave Abe's hand a squeeze. He'd seen Abe's stillness. Abe's quiet. He was skirting the issue of Abe's capture and confinement, knowing well enough that no matter Abe's protestations to the contrary, peace of mind was no small prize. "I want you to stay as long as you need."

"Yes?" Abe murmured, distractedly. He tilted his head and stared out at the yard where a couple of birds were pecking at a patch of scrubland—and beyond: Nathaniel Smythe making his way down the path. He was smoking a cigarette, but Henry could pick out the scent of fresh blood on him.

"Glad tidings," he said when he'd made his way to them, "on this pleasant morning."

"Hello, Nathaniel," Henry replied. And yes, Smythe's cheeks were almost ruddy.

Smythe exhaled a plume of smoke. "I spoke with my brothers tonight. We're in agreement: the threat of retaliation is low enough now that we'll have you on your way soon enough."

"And what will you do?"

"Believe it or not, Henry, I have a business to run. That Donne is still available, by the bye, if you're still interested."

"No—"

"Thank you," Abe cut in, "for forgoing retirement, if only for a short while."

"Blood's thicker than water," said Smythe, offhandedly. And then: "It's always been an honor to serve you. I'm not sure I ever had an opportunity to tell you that."

Abe huffed out a laugh. "We scarcely shared more than a dozen words in the years you three stood by me in Washington."

"Well," said Smythe, "you were only human."

With that he flicked his cigarette end to the ground, and in one smooth movement ground it out, lunged onto the compound's roof, and was gone.

Henry said, "He always did enjoy watching the sun come up." Then, catching the question in Abe's eyes: "I was not an only child."

"You mean Thomas Crowley…"

"Yes."

"And all of this – and back then, the Union – the Trinity was there because of you?"

"We are each bound to the other," said Henry, softly, "by chance if not by choice."

 

To Henry's surprise, Smythe wasn't exaggerating. He and Abe parted ways with the gentlemen of Triad Associates, LLC within the week—and Henry's Aston Martin took them home.

The place was just as he'd left it some two months before. Or nearly: Morse had installed extra surveillance equipment after he'd excised any evidence of the dead researcher's presence, cameras and electronic tripwires which Henry promptly disabled. Abe had been silent in the minutes it took them to leave the highway and make their way up the drive. The waxing moon gleamed on the sea, careening up and casting Henry's glass and steel bastion in blue-white light.

"Well?"

Abe hesitated. "It's so open. Exposed. A far cry from your cabin by the Ohio." And then, breathing deeply of the sweet, damp air: "The surroundings, though… I can see why you chose this place."

Henry took his hand and led him inside. Showed him the sprawling sitting room, the master bedroom and the sliding doors which led out onto the veranda replete with a Jacuzzi – installed not for himself but for the humans he brought there, he was hesitant to explain – and let in the chatter of egrets and ospreys. The library, the open kitchen that was used for little else than brewing tea.

And lastly, overcoming a wave of dread, he directed Abe to the study with its wall-to-wall collection of Lincolniana. He walked to the desk and switched on the lamp. Then he cleared his throat. "I suppose you could say… Well. I bet you'd never have guessed your face would have been destined to grace the side of a lunchbox, Mr. Lincoln."

"Hmm." Abe stared round the room, not quite aghast but certainly far from pleased. "Henry, I think this is what Freud might've called a 'fixation.'"

Damn him, but Henry couldn't argue with that.

 

Their lives developed a tentative rhythm. It had been a long time since Henry shared his bed with any regularity, but the arrangement was natural—and dearly longed for. Abe slept until late in the afternoon as Henry, perhaps already only dozing by the time the hour crested midday, thumbed through a book. Ever watchful. Aware of the chill of Abe's body; sensitive to his scent, the salt of the seaside air which clung to him even after one of his innumerable hot showers.

When Abe finally did begin to stir, Henry reveled in their closeness. He pressed dry kisses to Abe's temple and brow before teasing at his mouth. It was almost too much to bear: the permission granted, the familiarity of their limbs as they tangled—

So like coming home.

But sometimes… Sometimes Abe woke up screaming.

Abe would shake himself awake, wide-eyed and panting. And Henry talked him down. Stroked his hair and held him. Said, _"Abraham, my dear. You're all right. I have you,"_ meaning every word of it.

Hating to have to say it.

And yet tonight: "Abe, what is it?"

Abe shook his head, running his hands over his face. Then he pushed himself off the edge of the bed and made for the bathroom. Henry could hear the sound of the faucet running through the closed door.

"Abraham?"

For several long moments, there was no response. And then, as Abe stepped back out, shrugging into his robe: "It's nothing."

"Please—if you'd only—"

Abe shot him a look. Fury and despair clashed on his face. "I said it's nothing."

Moments later, Henry picked out the sound of the outer patio door sliding open and closed again. He slipped into a loose-fitting pair of trousers. And he waited a full three minutes before going after him.

By then, Abe was well away from the house, through the meadow, down the seacliff, and onto the private beach. It was just past sundown. A dense fog curled up the coast, hinting at cool rain to come, and Henry stared down beyond the berm at the sliver of high tide shore. Then he went down.

For all his good intentions when he moved to California, Henry rarely made it down to the water—but even if he did so daily, he doubted his awe would be diminished one whit. The cold Pacific foamed and crested white around the sea stacks, and then blue-green up to the shoreline. Henry felt a tickle of pleasure as he curled his toes in the sand.

And Abe was out to sea. Henry watched him stroke through the breakers, marveling at the smooth, athletic coordination of his limbs. After those years of starvation, his physique was once again back to fighting shape. A beautiful creature. And pragmatic to a fault: "If you came this far," he called, loud enough to carry over the crash of waves, "you might as well join me."

Henry hesitated. He lifted Abe's discarded robe and shook out the sand. And then: "I can't swim." Abe let out a single, barking laugh—but nothing else. It was another twenty minutes before he joined Henry on the beach, naked and dripping wet. Henry proffered the robe.

"Thanks." Abe slipped it on and drew a tortoiseshell tinderbox from the pocket: a parting gift from Benjamin Porter containing a lighter and a dozen neatly-rolled joints. He got one lit and settled onto the beach beside Henry. "'I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space,'" he said, taking a thoughtful drag, "'were it not that I have bad dreams.'"

And after a long moment, exhaling: "They developed a method of extracting my fangs that was quick and relatively efficient." Then, almost in a whisper: "Hurt like hell, though."

Oh. Oh, God. Henry had never lost his proverbial lunch in all his long years as a vampire. But at that moment, catching the haunted look in Abe's eyes, he thought he very well might.

"As for these—" Abe held up a hand, flexing his fingers. "I thought that if I drew my claws, they'd just cut off my hands. For a while, I wasn't willing to take the risk. And then when I was, I was too weak to try. But you know, Henry… Even before all this, not a day went by that I didn't think of you." 

"And I of you, Abraham. If I'd known—God, but if I'd had but an _inkling_ —"

"Yes. Well. You'd better believe that half the time, if I thought of you it was only to curse your goddamned bones."

"And the other half?" Henry ventured.

"A man is entitled to his private fantasies."

Abe passed the joint over and continued talking as Henry drew in a lungful of rich, resinous smoke. Marijuana had a way of easing a vampire's senses so that for a time, the world was distilled to the simple, immutable present.

"I bet you wouldn't have guessed that in the beginning, I thought my being taken might be for the best. That some good might come of it," Abe sighed. "I've never given up hope that a cure for our… condition might one day be possible. I'd found a doctor in Seattle. A hematologist working at the university medical center. I told her a little, and she was ready to send me packing… or have me committed—and then I _showed_ her. She put a drop of my blood on a microscope slide, and then a drop of her own, and damned if we didn't both see the truth of it magnified a thousand times. My blood cells _attacking_ hers. Consuming them.

"I think she went mad with the idea of it. But she suggested that if enough normal blood cells could be modified to counteract my afflicted ones, if they passed along a new genetic imperative. A new code— Then maybe my disease would go dormant. A vampire's hunger might be permanently slaked."

"She knew you for what you are?"

"A mythical beast who hunts from beyond the grave?" Abe asked drolly. "She took me on as a patient. A man with an illness of the blood, and nothing more. It was all very scientific. Even when she transferred my case to her supervisor, and he saw to it that I was quarantined. Kept at a CDC facility… My room had running water. I had books to read." Abe sighed and looked away. "You must think I'm an idiot."

"No," said Henry. "We all search at one point or another. The difference now, I think, is that technologies, the sophistication of ideas, make the prospect of a cure seem more real. Just within our grasp—and ever out of it."

"But it _must_ be possible. It's what Praxis wanted. Peter Pryor thought of little else."

"Abe: what you seek – an end to your hunger – is nothing less than true immortality. Godlike. But do you not think that knowing what we must do… and loathing ourselves for it… links us to our former humanity?"

"And what do you remember about being human?"

Henry was silent for a long moment. And then: "I remember climbing the old apple tree in my grandfather's yard, all the way to the top where the sunlight warmed the fruits' flesh. The scent of the apples. Their taste and crisp sweetness. Welcoming that same sunlight on my face. And Edeva calling to me from the ground: 'Henry, have haste!' with her voice like the peal of a bell.

"Later, when we were grown, when we were married, she still loved apples. The few bushels that were brought aboard our ship never made it to Roanoke, either having been eaten or gone rotten in the foul hold. And we found no native cultivations—though of course we were simply looking in the wrong places.

"We were so very far from home. But I did my best to make her happy. I snared rabbits in the woods surrounding the village, and would clean them by the river. Edeva made an incomparable rabbit stew, with root vegetables and a thick, greasy broth. The mere thought of it was enough to make my stomach rumble with hunger.

"Yes. I remember _human_ hunger. And my hunger for Edeva. The warmth of her body. How she enveloped me…

"Before… Before things went to Hell, she placed my hand on her belly and I felt our child move within her. I remember that, in an instant, like an epiphany, I knew I would do anything for her—and to see our family thrive."

Henry shook his head, pulling out of the reverie. Abe was staring at him. "Well. Human pain. The feeling of being ripped apart in body and soul. I remember that too."

"You did what you could, Henry. You've survived."

"No. I simply couldn't let myself die."

"I think a change comes over us when we're transformed. Whatever biological factors that make us what we are simply won't allow us to wish death upon ourselves." Abe shook his head. "Even when Praxis got ahold of me, I didn't wish it. Even when I was held and… And tested on."

"And never given human blood," Henry said, softly. "Did you miss it?"

Abe sniffed. "You know well enough, Henry. You know goddamn well."

Henry faltered, meaning to apologize, but Abe shook his head. "It's difficult to remember everything that happened there. They—I realize they starved me. But I know there were several occasions when they released a live pig into my cell." He shivered. And Henry did too. "You can imagine what happened next."

"Do you want—" A prickling of the old wrath rose up in his guts. "That is, we could _find_ them all. The ones who kept you."

"No," said Abe, softly. The first raindrops began to fall, misting over the sea. "Henry."

"Hmm?"

"Do you really not know how to swim?"

Henry was amazed. After everything, they were back to this. His mouth curved into a grimace. "As a matter of fact…"

"In four hundred and fifty years you never found the time to learn? For God's sake, you saved me from drowning in that river."

"It's not as though _I_ would have drowned in the process," Henry replied slyly.

Abe snorted. "Yes. All right." And then, after a minute: "I could teach you. It might take a while—maybe even years. But we could work at it…"

A stillness fell over them. For several long moments, the only sound to be heard was that of one small piece of the vast ocean meeting the earth.

Henry met Abe's eye. "You would stay with me?"

"If you'd allow it."

And Henry would. He held Abe's hand and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and he said, "Yes."


End file.
